She doesn't have a stillborn baby.
She doesn't have grief.
Sometimes I feel like she went off to live another life. A happier life. A lighter life. More successful. More confident. More determined.
Some days, that is how I still see myself. I wonder, where did she go...?
It is not just my baby boy who has taken on a "what could have been" life. But it is me, too.
I don't know exactly where the wrinkle in time took place, and I went one way, and she went another.
Here, in what is real, I try to splice it all together. Make it all one life. No trading. No do overs. Just one happy life.
That is me. Staring into my father's eyes behind the lens... knowing all things are possible - in the best imaginable way.
My sister was visiting from out of town this week and she and I went through boxes of old photo albums in my parents' storage locker. I looked at so many pictures of myself like this and had the same kinds of thoughts you describe here. This is one of the things that just kills me when I think of my living daughter's childhood experience: what a short, short time it was that she lived without knowledge of grief, that she could truly believe that all things are possible.
ReplyDeleteI hope you are doing all right this week. Thinking of you...
This is something I think about too. I look at old pictures and wish for a way to go back in time and warn myself or to figure out how I got separated from my real life. I'm so sorry that your son died. I wish things could be different for you (and the cute little you in the photo up there). But I suppose I'm glad you found your way to baby loss blog land. Peace and strength to you.
ReplyDeleteThank you Tracy, for your warm words
DeleteThis is so powerful. I can't believe it when I look at baby/child photos of myself that I would go on to have this life, with this sort of tragedy in it.
ReplyDeletexo
Oh what a confident looking little girl, you look like you are having so much fun there! I always feel a bit strange when I look back to the person I was before, some aspects of her seem to have disappeared so completely.
ReplyDeleteAnd sometimes I wonder what might be waiting for my own children, when I see their young happiness. Nothing like what happened to us. I hope and hope and hope.
And, as always, I'm so sorry that this happened to you, to Alexander. I wish that things were different. So very much.
I'm nodding my head, to the comments from you lovely ladies. Thank you
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