To Count As Gain

Life is full of questions. I am okay with them. I ask a lot of questions.

However, there have been a few questions that people have asked of me over the last 9 months that always catches me off guard.

"Is she your only one?"

How do I answer?

I have three children! I have given birth to three beautiful girls! So, what do I say?

Most of the time I give a curt, quick nod and try to walk away. Quickly. It is my only response without having to say anything, because to have to deny them as mine would hurt too much. I give a quick nod, a slight, barely noticeable movement. I give that nod when I can't stand the pity or when I don't have the strength to explain.

Sometimes, and more often than not, I tell whoever asked, that I have three girls. Her and two in heaven. That is a quick way to get rid of people. They don't know what to say, so they will say anything to get themselves away from this very uncomfortable, pain-filled moment.

It's like I'm contagious. They then treat me as if just simply being around me, will cause them too, to bury a child of theirs.

Some people have even had the nerve to tell me that I shouldn't include Emmerson and Vivienne when I think of my children.

Ouch! Really?! Just because they never got the chance to meet them, and their lives have not changed because of them, my life should not be different as well?

They were my babies! They still are my babies! I loved them while they were here with me, with a fierceness that any mother loves her children. I would have done anything for them.

I did do everything in my power to try to save them. I would have, if given the opportunity, laid down my own life so that they could have lived.

In death, I continue to love them with that same protective fierceness. They are my babies.

Here is something else people find necessary to tell me: You just need to have another one. Have another baby.

What!? Because another baby will replace the two I lost? Emmerson and Vivienne were people. They were special and unique in the fact that they were identical twins. They were special and unique in the fact that they were wanted and loved by so many in their short lives. They were special and unique in the fact that they each had souls and were loved by the One who created them. 

The people that tell me to have another, they hurt me but I know that they mean well.

But it still, all the same, hurts me. They don't realize that another baby will not fix me. It will not make me better. It won't heal the hurt. 


Another baby will not EVER be Emmerson and Vivienne.

And to be honest, I don't want another baby to do that. This hurt hurts only because I. Love. THEM. So. Much.

Another baby will not replace that love. That love is theirs and only theirs.

Another baby will be unique and special and loved in their own, designed, deserved way. But that baby will not be my Emmy and Vivi. They won't take their place.

A short while ago, my husband and I talked about more children. It is such a painful discussion for us to have. It hurts us both so deeply so we don't venture there very often. I am fearful of having another. He knows this. So he said, "I don't feel like our family is complete, so I would like to have more children . . . one day." There was silence and then very softly, with tears in his eyes, he says, "Our family never will be complete no matter how many children we have. They are not here. They are never coming back. There will always be two people in our family missing."


Such a bitter reality to realize.

I am terrified and ever so fearful of having another baby. Why? Not because I think they, too, will die before me. Even though I know that is a very real possibility.

It scares me for reasons I can't explain. I am scared of the memories that will flood me with another pregnancy. I am fearful of having to wear the same maternity clothes I did with Emmerson and Vivienne. I am fearful of being in that Ultrasound Room again. I am fearful that I won't let myself love that baby like I should because what if? I am fearful of the anxiety that may accompany me with that pregnancy. I am fearful that Emmerson and Vivienne will feel as though I have betrayed them.

But another baby will not be Emmerson and Vivienne. Another baby will not fix anything.

The hurt will be here, in my heart, for always.

Regardless if I have another child or if I let others know how many children I really have, the truth is always there. I have three children. I have been blessed to love three beautiful girls. And because I have loved, I hurt because there are two beautiful souls that I no longer get to hold.

I have three beautiful children. I count them, all, because more than me having three children, three little girls have possession of my heart.

I count them. I include Emmerson and Vivienne because to me, they count.

I count them because they matter.














Stephanie

Six Days Gone

I feel like I can't cope . . . with anything.

I am frustrated, irritable and short-tempered.

Today is day six of six. That is six days of my husband being gone. He will get home late tonight. I hope to be asleep but I probably won't. I will most likely still be awake long after he has entered dream-land. I still have a hard time finding sleep. It is still a love-hate relationship.

I don't know how many days my husband will be home for. He has recurrent training due. So, depending on the flights his company has him booked on, he may drive or fly (depending on the one that gives him more days at home) to the state where he has to complete his recurrent training. He may be home for one day, or for three. Our life, it seems, is always dependent on something centering around his job.

He was not home for many days last week. It seems the only proof I have of him being home is the mess he leaves in his wake. The dirty dishes and the increased laundry. I feel like a single mom but with the responsibility and increased work load one has with a husband.

I'm having a pity party for myself right now. I hope you don't mind. I am just sick and tired of my life and my daughter's life being centered around what her Daddy does for a living. Even she has started to express frustration with it and it breaks my heart. I would like, just once, to not be the person that has to constantly change my schedule for my husbands. I know a marriage is give and take but I feel like I am doing all the giving. If things start falling through the cracks, if things were left undone, I am the one my husband turns to to fix it. I can rarely turn to him because he usually isn't available when things start breaking down. I am the one to fill in the gaps.

I know there are worse things. Trust me, I really know. I am living it right now.

There is another anniversary approaching and still those heavy, empty arms. The reality is setting in.

I can't cope.

My daughter is at that age where every interaction is a difficult one.

She is strong-willed, independent and stubborn.

I prayed for her to be independent and strong-willed. I don't want her to fall down and give in when faced with temptation. I don't want her to break and fall to pieces the first time she comes across a difficult situation. I want her to be strong and independent. I just don't want her to be that and two-years-old at the same time.

I want to run away. I want someone to be here to fill in the gaps when the holes are consuming me. I want the luxury of leaving the house for thirty minutes (without my daughter) when I need a breather and a little perspective. I don't want to have to wait six days to get that. I usually don't get that even when he's home. He has an agenda when he's home and so, once again, everything gets arranged around that and I am back at square one.

I am not coping well. With all of this responsibility and with being a mom who misses her children.

The dinners that need to be fixed just to have a child not eat any of it. The clothes that need to be washed. The furniture that needs to be cleaned. The items that need to be bought at the grocery. The dirty bathrooms. My child who argues with everything I tell her, who won't eat but complains of being hungry. The child who won't sleep but has a melt down because there's a crease in her jeans that she doesn't want there. That schedule. The one we get every month where I let out a long sigh and realize my husband will be in the clouds more than he will be at home. It all adds up and I can't cope with it all. I want a husband who is home.

My babies and that grave that haunts me. That place I can't go. That place, just to think about, causes me to stop breathing. I want to go but I can't. If I go, then its another reminder of what really happened.

I want my babies back!

I feel like all my walls are caving in.

I fill so empty and how can I continue to be for the loved ones in my life when I have nothing left to give?

All the little things, all those little jobs that being a wife and a mother require that usually bring joy, are weighing on me. That grave and this grief and I can't cope.

I am snapping. I scream when it gets to be too much. I accuse my husband of not understanding, of being selfish and I tell him that we can't continue to function as a family that centers their days, their plans, their life around his job.

That is not fair and I know it. But when that weight overwhelms, I am not thinking of fairness, I'm thinking of how I can survive all of this.

This doesn't negate how I would and will follow him anywhere to support what it is he loves to do. But the following and the supporting doesn't negate the frustration and the exhaustion either.

I am sick of changing my plans for his planes. I am sick of canceling or rearranging last minute because his plane got delayed . . . again and he's stuck in a different time zone, yet again.

I am more than a pilot's wife, an almost three-year-olds mother, a stay-at-home-mom-who-used-to-love-her-job-as-a-nurse, a woman, a mother who buried two of her children.

I get lost in the shifting schedules, the dirty dishes, the chaos of clean and dirty clothes, that suitcase, the sifting and floating of the dust throughout the house, the grieving and the wishing and the missing. And it all consumes so much of my energy.

I know I am more than all of that and that life is much more than all of this but I can't find it and I can't feel it and I'm wondering if this life was only meant to be one where good is but a memory and stress and sadness are what is to greet me every time a corner has been turned.

The weight of it all is weighing me down, breaking me, exhausting me and I can't cope.





Stephanie

Does Fear Hold You?

There is a book out called What Women Fear. I have only seen the cover of the book but I am itching to pull it back and digest words.

I follow a blog by Angie Smith, the writer of the above mentioned book. She is a talented writer. She also lends her talent to a little site, (in)courage, where faith is shared and doubled.

Bloom Book Club is a part of (in)courage, and they are doing a study of What Women Fear. On (in)courage, Angie made a little request to blog about ones fears.

That's hard to do. I sat before the keyboard ready to pour out fears. A few times I did this without a single key being struck. I couldn't do it. It is hard to peel back that protective layer even to ones self.

There is something so scary about, well...pulling the covers back on your fears. It makes you feel exposed, transparent, vulnerable.

Deep breath in. Lungs inflate. Here I go.

I have never had one solid, steady fear in my life. As my life has changed with the twists and turns, so have my fears.

When I was younger, a school girl, my fear was that I wouldn't be accepted. That I would be rejected. That I wouldn't be liked for me.

Those two fears were my companions for many years.

During my engagement and the planning of promise, my fear was that my Dad would not be present. I was fearful that I would not have his arm to link with mine and walk me down the aisle to my future.

With my abdomen swollen with life and future the first time, I was scared that my husband's life would come to end before he witnessed new life.

That same fear crept back in with the second swelling of life. Two lives.

During that time, I never imagined that I would not see those two lives live before me. Before us.

I have been like many. Knowing, even has a child, that I would one day live in this world without my grandparents, without my parents and possibly without my spouse. I never imagined, thought, that I would live life without my children.

I always, innocently believed, that my children would bury me. Not the other way around.

Some have spoken that they know what my fear is now. They whisper on their lips that I must cling tighter to my living daughter due to my fear of losing her as well. I nod when this is placed in the space between.

I nod but it is not true. I nod because I think that is what they want to hear. I nod because I don't want others to think ill of me.

I nod but it is not true.

I don't want to lose my living daughter. I don't want to have to bury her too.

I don't want to lose my living daughter but it is not a fear that consumes me.

Since I have handed Emmerson and Vivienne back to the Lord, I have become someone I no longer recognize. I look in the mirror and I see someone who has aged. The reflection that stares back is someone who has lived a lifetime in 32 years of the heart beating.

There has never before in my life been such a distinct Before and After as there is now.

Before I was energetic, silly, motivated, smiling and laughing through life. I was eager for the future. I loved to teach my daughter all in life that was still so new to her. I was delighted.

After all of this, I am a place in the space. I sit. I go through the motions. I have no energy. It is used to just be.

When the darkness sweeps in, it becomes too black to see. What once was rationale has now become senseless. And what is senseless? Well, that just seems to be the missing link.

There are moments when I don't want to be taking up any more space in this place. I want the sharp, shearing pain to end.

This is pain. This is grief. This is what is ugly.

How do I function in a world where my babies are not present? How can I be expected to live when the heart is too heavy to squeeze?

So my fear now?

That my daughter will never know the silly, lets-have-fun, I-just-want-to-make-you-smile, make-you-laugh-mom I used to be.

That my husband will look in the eyes where the light has gone out and miss his wife.

It is this, that my grief, my hurt will overwhelm me and then become me.

Stephanie