I Miss You . . .

Ten months ago today, I held you both. I breathed you in and held my breath . . . hoping you would always stay with me.

It was a rough night last night. I laid in my bed and sobbed well past three am.

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Your Aunt and her best friend who is like a sister to me went to your grave yesterday. I haven't even been but others go. I am so grateful for that. They left gifts for you. They left you tulips and flowers and butterflies that soak up the sunlight and continue to glow in the dark. Your cousin left you a butterfly as well.

I am so grateful others go.

When I heard about the flowers and butterfly that glow in the dark, I thought, what a beautiful night light for you.

I want you here. I wanted so much more than the moments I did get with you.

While I was in the hospital, I never received the paper work needed for the one birth certificate. I finally inquired about that a couple of weeks ago. It set me back so I never contacted the person I needed to.

I did today.

I filled it out over the phone.

I spoke both of your names and I heard them on a strangers lips. It was such a sweet sound.

I spoke of your birthday.

I then had to talk with another in regards to your death certificates.

Again I spoke your names and again, I heard them on a strangers lips. It was such a sweet sound. It was so sweet to hear another say your names. They acknowledged you! Do you know what that means to a mommy who can no longer hold her babies?

I will be receiving one birth certificate and two death certificates. Why can't it just be two birth certificates? I don't want to hold my babies death certificates in my hands! It's unnatural!

But I want them. I need them. I don't have much. I need them because it's another link to you.

It's been ten months! Can you believe it? The memories are still so fresh and yet it feels like eternity since I last held you. And it feels like eternity until I get to hold you again.

Ten months! You two would be crawling around, never allowing me a moment of rest. You would be drooling and putting everything in your mouth. Would you, every time you saw me, crawl over to me and try to pull yourself up to my knees in the hopes that I would hold you? I would you know? I would hold you. Oh, how I would hold you!

Ten months! I would have a freezer of homemade baby food for you. I would clean your faces off after more of your food wound up on your face and hands and in your hair then in your bellies. Would you be blowing zerberts back at me every time you got a fresh spoonful of food?

Ten months! I would see how you two had your own language. I would hear your babbles. What would your first words be? Would it be Ma-ma or Da-da or would you try to say your older sisters name?

Would you giggle together? Would you try to keep up with your older sister or would you two be wrapped up in your own little world, leaving Alexandria out?

Ten months has passed. Ten months! We are just two months away from your first Birthday. Do you know that I would be planning everything now? You would each have your own cake. You would each have your own presents.

Ten months absent of memories made of you.

I miss you, Emmerson and Vivienne! And I love you so!







Mommy

The Beautiful Side Of Grief

Grief is ugly and hard and everything messy.

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But there also lies hope in the pain. Smiles in the tears.

Grief . . . it just sucks! It is just plain shitty! Sorry, but there really are not enough words to explain how awful it is.

We got dealt a crap hand. We really did. And it just didn't stop with our babies dying. This past year has been one blow after the other. I am starting to wonder if we will ever be able to pick ourselves up off the floor and stand on our own two feet again.

But I refuse to let this stop us from enjoying what we have. I refuse to stop trying to get up off that dirty floor.

Grief sucks but you still have to move forward. And in the moving forward you start to notice small little glimmers and then cracks where light is trying to creap in and then you see windows in the darkness that are filled with nothing but the sun.

There is a beautiful side to grief.

It is knowing and feeling that Heaven is real. It is knowing and feeling that it is very close. Heaven has never felt more real to me than it does now.

It is feeling a renewed purpose to living this life. It is knowing that the purpose is so much bigger than you.

It is realizing that everything is a gift. Every moment. Every event. Every situation. It is all gift. Because it is all from Him.

My girls are a gift. I would not trade all this suffering for the gift of them. I have been blessed. Some people live their whole lives never knowing or experiencing the kind of love I have for Emmerson and Vivienne. I would not trade that.

When it comes to love, we gamble big. The stakes are always high but always worth it!

The beautiful side of it is knowing and treasuring all the smaller things that I missed before that are now, and always were, so huge and important.

The beautiful side of grief is knowing my Saviour and trusting Him like I never did before.

It's knowing there is so much more to this life than big houses, nice cars, and all those material things I wanted to possess before.

It is knowing and resting in the knowledge that my girls are safe. They are happy. It is knowing that I will see them again and I will know them and love them just the same.

It is knowing that there is a purpose in the pain and beauty in the broken.

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Stephanie

The Dark Side Of Grief

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There's this dark side that I have been wrapped up in, consumed in, and hidden in for months now.

I see, now, that it was a place of safety. It was a place of healing.

But, oh, how that healing hurts. And that healing can be really scary sometimes.

The ones who grieve and have grieved, there is a side you don't get to see. You don't see it when you pass them in the grocery store or see them out and about running errands.

Sure, they look a little sad. They may even look a little beaten.

But there is a side you don't see.

You don't see them wrestle in the ugly pit of darkness. You don't see them thrashing about as if they are truly being beaten.

You don't hear those anguished questions of "why" uttered.

The ones close to me have. My husband. My sisters. My parents.

They have seen it. They have witnessed it.

The dark side of grief is incredibly ugly. It is incredibly painful. It is incredibly dark. It is incredibly lonely.

There have been amazing people who have taken my hand and walked with me but it is still very lonely. No one can take an once of the pain away.

I realized this the day we buried Emmerson and Vivienne.

My sisters and sister-in-law put together a little dinner at our house after the funeral. I was present physically but not mentally or emotionally. That day, I mainly stared. I couldn't follow conversations. I had no desire to eat. Laughter seemed like a foreign language to me.

I remember as people started to leave I wanted to desperately cling to them and beg them to take me with them. I thought, if I could just leave this place, it will all disappear. If I could just leave this place, I won't feel this pain. 


I also remember feeling deep anger as these people left. I was very aware that they would return to their normal lives once they got in their cars. Where was my normal? 


There was no escaping the pain. There was no getting around that profound, empty hole. I had to go through it and I. DID. NOT. WANT. TO!

The dark side of grief is feeling nothing and everything. It is losing all desire in everything that you once found joy in. It was wanting, begging, pleading for anything to come along and make the pain stop. I understand how addicts become addicts now.

A lot of people would ask me how I was doing physically. If I was healing physically. I would nod but I didn't really know. The pain of losing my girls trumped any other pain that I may have felt. I did not feel physical hunger until three months after goodbye. I know I went days without eating. What was the point?

The dark side of grief is keeping all the blinds shut and wishing the sun wouldn't shine. It is feeling completely pissed off that it came out. How can it continue to shine when the world as you knew it had stopped?

The dark side of grief is wanting to stay locked in your house but wanting to escape at the same time. But once you left your house, you want back in. You wonder where you fit in this world. You don't belong with the masses who are going on about their lives as if they will live forever. As if bad won't strike them.

The dark side of grief is not being able to sleep but not being able to get out of bed in the morning. It is such a heavy weight that ties you to the floor and it seems impossible to even get dressed.

It is looking at your parents and knowing and feeling that you are so much older than they are. It is feeling like you have lived a lifetime. It is looking in the mirror and seeing someone who has aged so many years in so few moments.

The dark side of grief is weeping every single night till the body hurts and you are left wondering when you will be all dried up.

The dark side of grief is ceaseselly praying for your God to take you in your sleep. It is begging Him to stop your heart.

The dark side of grief is looking at a bottle of pills and wondering . . . if I take them all . . .

The dark side of grief for me wasn't that I wanted to die, I just lacked the desire to live. It wasn't that I wanted to die, I just wanted a way for all the pain to end. It was just that I wanted it all to be over. I wanted the suffocating, unbearable weight of pain to be taken from me.

The dark side of grief is ugly. It hurts. It sears. It burns. And you just want someone to take it all away. Or for someone to be able to turn back the hands of time and undo the mess that is now your life.






Stephanie

Just Breathe

Who doesn't love a little Eddie Vedder every now and then?

I love his voice! It is smooth and rough at the same time.

Some of the lyrics of this song came to me when I was in labor with Emmerson and Vivienne. When I knew that delivering them was a reality.

Stay with me. Let's just breathe.


This is my song to them . . .

Stephanie

What Is Good About Good Friday?

I know Easter was almost a week ago.  However, there have been thoughts and emotions I have been chewing on. That and finding the time to be able to write.

I went to Good Friday Service last Friday. I almost didn't go because we had just returned home from a family vacation. I was exhausted with a lot of laundry to do and a little girls third birthday party to prepare for the next day.

But I went.

And as I listened to His journey being recounted, I grew heavy. The day of his crucifixion has never affected me like that before. He suffered so. And to add insult to injury, he was mocked, He was laughed at, He was spit upon.

I wonder, if I would have been there, who would I have been? What would I have done?

I grew heavy but in that heaviness I was also comforted. I know my suffering cannot compare and I'm not trying to but I am at peace knowing that my King has compassion and sympathy because He knows! He really knows what it's like to grieve and to mourn and to hurt.

He spoke words, that were recounted during that Good Friday Service, that resonated with me.

"Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?"

"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Matthew 27:46

Those words, that statement, begged a question from me, Where's the good in Good Friday?

Whenever I read that in the past I always imagined that He yelled it in a loud voice. Letting His statement be heard throughout. 

Now, I envision that those words were almost breathless. Too full of despair to put much energy into them but still feeling a need to voice the question . . . the pain.

I felt that despair in that delivery room. In a room that usually brings so much joy, I felt utter despair and that God had abandoned me. 

The people stood watching, and the rulers even sneered at him. They said, "He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, the Chosen One" (Luke 23:35).

I wonder how much restraint that required of Him. If that was me, I would have wanted to prove that they were wrong. That Christ was who He said He was. 

This is the thing that struck me last Friday. He could have removed Himself from that cross. He could have done it. 

There would have been no argument then, once he hurled himself from the cross, about who He was. I'm sure all standing around would have believed.

But He didn't.


What is good about Good Friday?

I remember asking for a miracle. There was never a question of whether I believed He could perform one. 

But He didn't perform the one I had asked. 

I don't know why.

He could have healed Lazarus before death staked claim over his body.

But He didn't.

Death thought it won a victory and then Jesus came and performed a miracle that no one had asked. No one could have imagined! Lazarus walked out of that tomb.

"Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?" (John 11:40)

I do know why He didn't remove himself from the cross that day.

He hung there in order to save all.

That's the Good in Good Friday. 

That was the miracle He was performing. 

No one could have even dreamed the request to hang and suffer in order to save souls.

He could have removed Himself from that cross.

But He didn't. He didn't because He knew there was greater glory in the suffering.

The Good was in the suffering. It was in the anguish. The Good was there the whole time because the ugly had to come to make way for the glory.

Glory came three days later. The tomb stood empty.

There was purpose in the pain. 

The suffering was redeemed. 

The cross where suffering bore witness and the tomb that stands empty gives me peace. 

I believe that all pain . . . even my pain . . . has a purpose. 

I believe it will be redeemed. My God is a God who takes what others throw away and dismiss and He redeems it. He makes it beautiful. He has a purpose. 

Stephanie