A few weeks ago it was infant loss remembrance day. As the days and weeks bring us closer to
November and closer to Thanksgiving, I can feel my mood start to change. I can feel it in myself, and I can see it in
my husband and I can see it in my son too.
November 26th was the day my daughter was born. It was also the day she died.
Stillbirth is a different loss than any other. I often think about those differences. Its not that the differences make it any
easier of harder. All I can say is that stillbirth
is its own sort of grief and its so very hard to describe. Normally, I suppose that when you lose
someone, you mark their birthday. You
can find some comfort in recalling happy memories that you had with that
person. And hopefully, other people
remember too. With stillbirth it’s not
that way. Her birthday is the day of her
death. Her birthday is the day of my
worst nightmare. A nightmare that I had
to live through and I nightmare that I don’t wish to revisit (although I do all
too often.) With stillbirth, you get only moments to hold
one of the most important people that you will ever know, and you have a
lifetime of empty memories that fill your head.
You think about every milestone, every smile, and every little
accomplishment that you never ever got to see.
I have a dream all the time. It
starts the moment the nurse took her out of my arms and walked out the
door. In my dream, I realize that I need
more time. I realize that what she is
taking away is a piece of my heart. And I
know in this dream that that hole will never be filled and that I will spend
every day dealing with that emptiness, so in the dream I go after her. I follow her down the hall and take my
beautiful daughter wrapped in her pink cable knit blanket, back into my
arms. In the dream, I feel her weight, I
feel softness of her blanket, but most importantly I feel something that I have
never felt in these past 2 years…I feel completely and utterly whole.
I am not saying that after 2 years I don’t feel joy. I’m not saying that each day is a black void
of nothingness although I remember the days when this was true. I’m only saying that the emptiness is something
that you learn to live with, or live around.
Not everyone understands this.
Maybe it’s because she was only on this earth a short time. Maybe it’s because for 9 months only I felt
her and thought about her every waking moment.
Maybe it’s because in reality nobody knew her but me. Maybe she doesn’t feel real to them because
they never saw her smile, or made any memories with her….neither did I. But that’s the emptiness I’m trying to
explain. When the nurse took her away, that’s what I
was left with…. An emptiness. A permanent lack.
A depravation. So when people
look at me now, two years later, and they see my baby son and they say things
like “See, it all worked out”, it shocks
me into silence. It is incomprehensible
that they don’t understand that nothing about that situation will ever “work
out”. They don’t know that she crosses
my mind all day long in the same way that my living children do when we are
apart. They don’t know that there is a permanent
emptiness in my arms even when I’m holding my living baby. They don’t know that although feeling and joy
has come back into my life, there is a numb space in my heart that cannot be
reached by anything. All I can think to
ask is which of their children I could take away and replace with another, but
I never do. I just smile and wish I
could be as happily ignorant.
So, I think an infant remembrance day is a good thing. It is a day to acknowledge that is not quite as
painful as the exact day your worst nightmare came true. It is a day to let people that you know who
have lost an infant, know that you remember.
That even though maybe you didn’t hold that baby, or see that sweet
smile, you understand that their loss is as real as any other. It’s a day to reach out and say that you
recognize that she lives her life with loss every day. I
know, and maybe you can understand a little too that a lack of memories doesn’t
make her any less “real”….she was 5 pounds and 3 oz.. She had her brother’s exact chin. She had the same huge arches that my feet
have. She had a perfect little black
crib, full of baby shower gifts, and a loving big brother waiting for her at
home. She was and is my beautiful perfect baby
daughter, and nothing in this world will ever fill up the lifetime of empty
memories or the hole in my soul that was created the moment they took her from
my arms forever.
