You might think it is unfair to lose a baby and you are right. But what really feels unfair is all the circumstances around my loss.
Its not the first one. I wasn't finished grieving the loss of my sister. Anna was the thing pulling me out. I often felt guilty that I cried so much during her pregnancy. She was supposed to be the rainbow after the cloud of grief had settled on my life. I was just beginning to feel some peace with that grief, the week before was the first week I noticed I wasn't crying as much. It took 14 months. And I know this loss is deeper. So when its hard to get out of bed, and people tell me its been 4 weeks, I should be doing more, I can't because the looming years of grief ahead of me seem so daunting, because I know whats coming.
I know the drives to preschool drop off come with tears the entire way there. Thinking my kids don't see it because they are behind me. But then my six year old says, "Is it because this song reminds you of Auntie Kimmy." Wise beyond his years that one.
I know I cried in the baby section of target the first time I realized I would never be an auntie to another of my sisters Children. I have fully avoided target in this grief because it was where I found so much joy shopping for Anna. That baby section will wreck me.
The stupidest things will pop up and remind you of grief. Often unexpectedly. Taking the breath from your lungs. And that was a sister I knew was struggling with mental health. That wasn't a baby who is full of hope and newness. In your naive mind you think babies don't die. It goes against the order of nature. I worried about everything, but I never worried about her NOT coming. Because that just doesn't happen. But it did.
So I compound my grief. Something unimaginable because pressed into your heart on top of everything else completely devastating. Thoughts swirl into your head with no where to go, so they spin you deeper. I felt sad that I was finally having a daughter and I couldn't share that joy with my sister. But now I cannot share my sorrow of losing a child with my sister by my side. I think about how my parents could have lost both their children in the span of just 14 months. Too close my dad told me, the thought weighs on them too. I think about the time my sister was so adamant that I knew she would surrogate for me if I ever needed it. In my youth thinking, this was such a stupid thing to talk about because of course we could. But now that that might be gone, Its all that I could think about, two options gone at once. I wasn't finished processing once grief, but now a new one is so much stronger that I can't even think about Kimmy most days You're brain can only process so much.
They are forever tangled together. This incredible gift I was given to bring me out of the worst days of my life, had turned into showing me that they can get worse. It wasn't the end of the storm with a rainbow waiting just beyond. I have entered the eye of the storm, the cold isolated numbing center of pain. And to get out I must again walk through the other side. Knowing what it cost me before, knowing it will be worse this time, knowing that I will change and can never go back, again. Knowing all that I know about grief, and knowing nothing at the same time, because this is different. I hate knowing the loss of a sister, and now a daughter too.
With love, lissa