Friday, September 7, 2012

Hope (or lack thereof)

It came out of my mouth before I realized that I felt that way.  I am losing hope. 

I looked at him and asked if he felt the same way.  He nodded sadly.

There is nothing like the grief of losing a child.  Nothing.  We are not supposed to bury our children.  Period.  But there is a different kind of grief when the journey to have another child proves to be a more bumpy road that you had anticipated.  It's frustrating and sad and consuming.

We try to focus on the good and there is so much good!  But at the end of the day, we are still coming home to a quiet house with no baby.

I bought these stones a few months back and sometimes just hold them in my hand trying to be mindful of their message.  I use them as a talisman to calm and center me.  It often works.

Sometimes I feel like I am losing my connection with my daughter.  The longer she is not here, the less I feel her.  The time I should be spending on her, I spend on hoping for a sibling for her.  

I feel robbed of all the times we did not get to share together.  The longer she is gone, the more that comes into focus.  In the beginning, I was so intent on having another baby so that I could see Allie in that baby.  I could hold her brother or sister and feel her spirit from within.  But there is no baby.  So instead, I close my eyes and picture what might have been...what should have been. And I find myself grieving for the child we lost as well as the child we have not been able to have since.

The nursery was converted back into a guest room.  Most of the time, that's all it is to me.  Sometimes, though, late at night, I wander in there and look at my daughter's hand prints and foot prints that hang on the wall and I have tears on my face before I even process why.  How in the world did I get here?

And that is when I realize that uttering it out loud was speaking the truth.  I have been losing hope.   I am on a mission now to get it back.  To look at the glass as half full.  To hope that we might just get our rainbow after all. 

I said to Gary on our way home last night, "Wouldn't it be nice if there was a baby just dropped off our on doorstep?"  His reply?  "No, we are not even home right now!"  It made us laugh.  And we need to still be able to laugh.

So what is my hope?  To parent a child with my husband.  We can have that dream.  But not without hope.  I guess I just need to be reminded of that every once a while.  I think I got it now...

1 comment:

  1. In the dark days after Elizabeth died followed by my miscarriage I told a good friend that I had no hope. She wrote me a card that I have kept on my desk and read dozens of times since. It basically says she would carry the hope for me to have a living child even when I had lost it. Some days I hid the card away because it was too painful to see even that much optimism but I always took it back out again eventually. I'm sorry you are in that place sometimes and i know you will keep re-discovering the hope and the dream.
    On I lighter note I LOVE your husband's sense of humor :)

    ReplyDelete

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