Not Just Another Day

Today was what it was. What fate/Nature/God intended? I'll never know. (I got so sick of hearing people say that it just wasn't God's will for us to have that baby. Who are we to presume to know the will of God, and why would anyone SAY that to a person who has just lost a child, anyway?) I only know what I feel. And I feel like today wasn't what it was "supposed" to be...or at least what I once lived expecting it would be, hoping it would be.

At best, today was supposed to be a day of celebration that our family had just grown (whether today or recently), a day of blissful sleep deprivation, hopeful breastfeeding anguish or success (it could go either way), dozens of itty bitty diapers, and tiny tortellini socks in my laundry. So many things. Or maybe I would be in labor right this very minute, struggling to breathe through it all and see it through to the end drug-free again. Maybe I would still be wondering if the person I was working so incredibly hard to bring into this world would be my daughter or my son.

At worst, today was supposed to be a day of swollen ankles, sore hips, and labored breathing, waiting anxiously for Baby to decide to come join the party and finally make Ava the big sister she's been so eager to become. It wasn't supposed to be a day of sadness. It was supposed to remain my baby's due date for nine whole months. But it didn't. And I had to say goodbye to a person I never knew, nor would I.

That changed January 28, 2007, for me. I knew it would. I knew I would think of that baby today, but I didn't expect grief to burden me for the past week as well. This time last year I was remembering Challenger. Now I'm remembering a loss of my own. My child. And it was really just another day, like any ordinary Sunday. As it should be, I suppose. But try telling that to any woman who has lost a child. It's not an ordinary day (or week, it turns out). It's a week of ineffable emptiness, almost loneliness in some ways. But oddly, not consuming...just in occasional twinges. Like growing pains. It's there, but it only takes over your thoughts every now and then, sometimes becoming unbearable but then passing on to life's ordinariness once again. It came last week in the image of a father holding his infant daughter and speaking such sweet, wonderful words to her that you could feel his love for her. It came in falling snow behind the cross in the picture window at church. A picture of God pouring down bits of Heaven, or goodness, or love, or comfort for my sorrow...I don't know which. But He was there.

Sometimes you just have to succumb to your pain and let it pour out briefly, until the next round of overwhelmed-ness washes over you. It was as if the snow was God's way of telling me it was okay to succumb, to let tears pour out of me as effortlessly as it poured out of the sky with the beautiful backdrop of winter trees...of quiet solitude. I wanted all sound to cease so that everyone else could hear God as clearly as I could, or maybe it's more precise to say so that everyone could experience God's presence as tangibly as I was in that moment of sorrow. But I realize now as I knew then, that everyone hears/feels/experiences God in different ways. God knows I am a creature of sensory memory. He speaks to me in wind chimes and heavy snowfall. Both were used to carry me through legs of this life experience, and neither of them will ever cease being sensory reminders from God for me in this life.

Everything's gonna be okay.