Sigh. I am so tired. Found this at my favourite (?) infant loss community online. Pretty much describes what life’s like lately.
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This is now what “normal” is…
Normal is having tears waiting behind every smile when you realize someone important is missing from all the important events in your family’s life.
Normal for me is trying to decide what to take to the cemetery for Birthdays, Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Years, Valentine’s Day, and Easter.
Normal is feeling like you know how to act and are more comfortable with a funeral than a wedding or birthday party..
Normal is feeling like you can’t sit another minute without getting up and screaming, because you just don’t like to sit through anything.
Normal is not sleeping very well because a thousand what if’s & why didn’t I’s go through your head constantly.
Normal is reliving that day continuously through your eyes and mind, holding your head to make it go away.
Normal is having the TV on the minute I walk into the house to have noise, because the silence is deafening.
Normal is staring at every baby who looks like he is my baby’s age. And then thinking of the age she would be now and not being able to imagine it. Then wondering why it is even important to imagine it, because it will never happen.
Normal is every happy event in my life always being backed up with sadness lurking close behind, because of the hole in my heart.
Normal is telling the story of your child’s death as if it were an everyday, commonplace activity, and then seeing the horror in someone’s eyes at how awful it sounds. And yet realizing it has become a part of my “normal”.
Normal is each year coming up with the difficult task of how to honor your child’s memory and her birthday and survive these days. And trying to find the balloon or flag that fit’s the occasion. Happy Birthday? Not really.
Normal is my heart warming and yet sinking at the sight of something special my baby loved. Thinking how she would love it, but how she is not here to enjoy it.
Normal is having some people afraid to mention my baby.
Normal is making sure that others remember her.
Normal is after the funeral is over everyone else goes on with their lives, but we continue to grieve our loss forever.
Normal is weeks, months, and years after the initial shock, the grieving gets worse sometimes, not better.
Normal is not listening to people compare anything in their life to this loss, unless they too have lost a child. NOTHING. Even if your child is in the remotest part of the earth away from you – it doesn’t compare. Losing a parent is horrible, but having to bury your own child is unnatural.
Normal is taking pills, and trying not to cry all day, because I know my mental health depends on it.
Normal is realizing I do cry everyday.
Normal is disliking jokes about death or funerals, bodies being referred to as cadavers, when you know they were once someone’s loved one.
Normal is being impatient with everything and everyone, but someone stricken with grief over the loss of your child.
Normal is sitting at the computer crying, sharing how you feel with chat buddies who have also lost a child.
Normal is feeling a common bond with friends on the computer in England, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands and all over the USA, but yet never having met any of them face to face.
Normal is a new friendship with another grieving mother, talking and crying together over our children and our new lives.
Normal is not listening to people make excuses for God. “God may have done this because…” I love God, I know that my baby is in heaven, but hearing people trying to think up excuses as to why healthy babies were taken from this earth is not appreciated and makes absolutely no sense to this grieving mother.
Normal is being too tired to care if you paid the bills, cleaned the house, did laundry or if there is any food.
Normal is wondering this time whether you are going to say you have two children or one, because you will never see this person again and it is not worth explaining that my baby is in heaven. And yet when you say you have one child to avoid that problem, you feel horrible, as if you have betrayed your baby.
Normal is avoiding McDonald’s and Burger King playgrounds because of small, happy children that break your heart when you see them.
Normal is asking God why he took your child’s life instead of yours and asking if there even is a God.
Normal is knowing I will never get over this loss, in a day or a million years.
And last of all, Normal is hiding all the things that have become “normal” for you to feel, so that everyone around you will think that you are “normal”.
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Oh how achingly true this all is. Reading it just brings so much of what I expertly suppress every day to the surface. My loss is everywhere. Everywhere. Today coming back into Canada from the US, Tim mentioned that we have to pick up passport renewal forms, 3 of them this time, as Evan’s never had one. I looked at him and said “not four” and he said “I know, I was thinking it too.” There are just so, so many reminders of the fact that our daughter is not here every single day. It’s exhausting, feeling them, attuning to them, wasting energy on them. We are being reminded over and over again that she’s not here, nor will she ever be. We’ll never be that perfect family of four. Even if we do go on to have another child, we’ll still never be it. We’d then be a fractured family of five. There is no win. I used to be so relieved when families I’d known who’d lost would conceive again, as though I thought they were ‘fixed’. Oh, the naivete. What I wouldn’t give for a dose of that right now.
God I’m missing you tonight, my beautiful girl. Every second I feel your absence, a gaping, empty hole in my life where you should be. There are so many things I do that I shouldn’t be able to. Spending hours online, staying up late, getting drunk camping with friends. None of this should be my life right now. I should be on maternity leave, with my vibrant 10 month old, pushing you on the swing at the park, splashing with you in the bath, singing you songs goodnight. My body should be providing milk for you, I should be buying you fuzzy pajamas for fall. All of this is so wrong, so confusing and messed up. I have learned to ‘get by’ in the world every day; survive, if you will, but I have not learned how to live again. How to desire, or want or thrive. I am basically existing. All I think about every second of every day my sweet baby is you, and how incredibly unjust it is that you’re not here. You were an innocent child, whose life was taken before you had a chance to take one breath of sweet air, hear our voices tell you we love you, feel our hands stroke your newborn soft skin, feel a gentle kiss from your brother, who was so excited to meet you. How can any of this be real? How can it be forever? How can I possibly go on to lead a ‘full’ and ‘meaningful’ life, as I’m promised I will? Oh baby girl, I ache all the way through for you. I am wrung out, there is nothing left. Nothing but pain. I am so tired.
I love you so much. We all do, and wish you were here with us, getting to know your amazing big brother, who would be so good to you.. feeling sand between your toes, grass between your fingers, wind in your hair, sun on your face. None of it will ever be, and I am so sad about that. There is not enough sadness in the world to fill the hole in my heart where you are. God I wish desperately you were here with us.