Ache

It's time. It's time to write for just five minutes. One topic. No proof-reading, no editing, just writing.

When I saw what the topic was this Friday, I gave a smirk and thought, nope. Not going to write about that. Nope, so I clicked on to another site and finished what I needed to do on my computer.

Nope, because people are probably getting sick of me writing about grief . . . ache. It's been my life for the last eight months and I am just now starting to feel like I can write about other things than hurting. And the other reason I shook my head no was because, really, I could write a book about aching so how could I possibly condense this into five minutes?

Ache

That word, that emotion, that hurt . . . it is not foreign to me anymore. But, was it ever really foreign to begin with?

I ache in new ways. I ache in old ways. I hurt deep. I hurt wide. I cry rivers. I sob loudly.

I sob, I hurt, I ache because I have lost.

I sob, I hurt, I ache because I first loved.

What's that saying, "It's better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all"?

How true! And to think all those years ago in high school, I thought the love they were referencing was about a boy.

See, I hurt and I ache, probably for the rest of my days because how does a mother who has buried two of her children never not ache? Pieces of myself gone . . . forever. But, I couldn't have this profound hurt if I first didn't love deeply.

And I will never apologize for loving.

But here is an ache too. Watching your children grow up.

That is a completely different ache. It's one of those heart-swelling aches.

To watch my daughter play, eat, sleep . . . brings me joy but an ache always accompanies it. Because wasn't she, just a day ago, that tiny newborn who left her footprints on my newly soft, still swollen belly? Wasn't she, just a week ago, learning to crawl? Wasn't she, not that long ago, trying to figure out how to move those delicious lips of hers to form the word "mommy"?

In a months time, she will be blowing out three candles. Three!

Those candles that she will blow out will remind me of the days that have already blown past, and the days to come that will fly by.

My throat will be thick with tears because as any mommy knows, those birthdays are all so bitter sweet.

I will have that heart-swelling ache on her birthday because of the blessing that is. And I will have that all too familiar ache for those moments I will never have with my precious Emmy and Vivi.

I ache because I live . . . because I love.












Stephanie