The best way I've explained the grief of a child is the analogy that compares it to the loss of a limb. When I lost Kimmy, there was many moments of deep unnerving emotional pain. But there was a lot more breaks from it too. Because there was distance.
Physically, because we lived in different countries. 1000 miles between us. Also because the relationship of a sister allows the distance in your life in a daily way. Though I miss being able to call her up any time of the day to talk. Celebrate holidays together in a way only she knew me. Share memories and make new ones together. She didn't live in this house with me.
It's not only my house, its my heart too. I carried Anna in a way only I can do. The mother child bond happens instantly and it grows faster than anything else on earth. In those short 8 months, I knew her. When I saw her for the first time, I already knew that face.
She would not only be with me on the special days, Canada Day first, 4th of July immediately after. Holidays that are meant to be happy, now carrying a 'what if she was here right now.' Each one thought about far in advance. Prepared for with commemorative outfits waiting to be worn. Now hauntingly a mirror of emptiness, my heart as empty at the tiny romper laying flat on the top of her nursery dresser.
The big days you can see coming, but that doesn't make them any easier. There is still pain in those days. But sometimes the little moments are worse. * When you are awake at 2 am, Thinking about how you would have been awake with a crying baby, but it is silent. * When you are putting kids in the car and know there is a third carseat missing. * When all the tiny laundry you have folded in drawers, is more frustrating than the piles of laundry waiting to be done. * When you recover faster than previous Csections, because you have the option to lay in bed all day instead of caring for another. * When you don't need the stroller on walks. * When there is no bottles on the counter. * When things are NOT happening that you KNOW happen after the birth of a baby.
It is 24 hours of the day. This kind of missing someone is unique. Because a baby is one of the only humans in your life that is with you every single hour. So it is much like a limb, something that you have grown dependent on in life. That you feel you cannot live without. That when tragedy strikes, you realize the human reality is that you CAN in fact live without it. You can work extremely hard every day and recover from the initial incident. But you will never be the same.
Losing a leg would mean learning to walk with one leg. Losing an arm turns into learning how to eat and write without it. You would develop ways to work around the loss. I am working on ways to move around my grief and loss. Forever changed and forever remembering that loss. I feel the daily urge of something missing in my life.
People that lose a body part that is that significant, often talk about phantom pain. Continuing to feel a sensation of their body that is physically gone. The mind is hard to rewire that way. Rather believing imaginary things over fact. It also describes the intense lack of a baby physically in your life, after you give birth to a baby. Its a 100% part of your life, that is instantly 0%. So my brain continues to believe there is a baby, I feel that yearning to care for it, but I cannot. The phantom pain of absence.
Unlike a limb, no one can see my pain. My stomach has shrunk back to its previous appearance. I do not get a parking spot tag because I am struggling to move forward. Strangers cannot see that it's a miracle I am grocery shopping. That I continue to live an everyday life, despite the loss.
Mine is a silent unseen struggle, stillbirth brings so much silence to your life. I never realized that a baby crying could be the most beautiful sound on earth. But I know its absence is shattering. I am giving a voice to a silent tragedy in our society. So many people are reaching out to say my words are validating their feelings that they could never express. It isn't easy, I would rather have lost my legs, than losing Anna. But I didn't get a choice. No one gets a choice when tragedy is involved. So we just continue to try and live with our pain. Physical & phantom.
I am having phantom pain
That missing piece of my body, is a piece of my heart.
It is a baby that was born, and never breathed.
I am missing her.
with love, lissa