Hi sweet girl!
It’s funny how small things can bring you right back to a time or place. And how we make rituals around them hoping to relive those moments, even if they can hurt a little. I remember being out shopping for Christmas after you were born. Your whole story seems so wrapped up in so many holidays in rapid fire succession. Each year I struggle to keep up – Halloween (it was less than a week after we found out you were sick), Thanksgiving (it was the weekend before your funeral, and the weekend I had to have an emergency D&C away from home after you were born because I was bleeding out), Christmas (our first without you). I can’t separate them from you.
Anyway, we have a BIG mall here called the Mall of America and it’s so big it can be exhausting navigating the whole thing but I was determined to get some Christmas shopping done. And I remember being so weary and worn down after the adrenaline of preparing to meet you and saying goodbye was gone. And just before I had to trudge all the way across the mall to get to where I had parked the car, I saw a Starbucks and realized I could drink coffee again (I usually give up most types of caffeine when I’ve been pregnant or nursing) so I ordered a new drink: a salted caramel mocha.
It was glorious. Hot and rich… and the most bittersweet thing I have ever tasted. It was like the deep sweet joy of my baby girl topped with my salty tears. And gosh if I don’t feel silly admitting that a stupid coffee drink reminds me of you. And I don’t know why I even would want to remember that moment in time, because it’s not as if it was “happy.” But sometimes I feel like I need to dwell in my grief to be closer to you, to grasp on to any memory, happy or sad, to feel like I REMEMBER you. Because there are so many details I can’t remember about when I was pregnant with you. So each fall, when they carry it again I drink WAY too many because I want to pull you close. And each winter when the baristas tell me they’re out of the ingredients to make them, that they’ve moved on to peppermint and gingerbread, it’s like I mourn a bit the passing of time and the passing of you. Another year passed.
Another year passed since I’ve gotten the courage to sit down and write to you. Does that make it a pattern? Our new normal? I’m not sure. The problem is, so many things happen in a year and time travels so quickly that everything blurs out of focus until something extraordinary happens to stop the world from spinning for a moment.
Let me tell you the story that sticks out this year for me and you. Four years ago I started working occasionally (which I hesitate to call it that – it’s more like a vacation from my everyday job of mom-ing!) and have even had the special opportunity to work with each and every one of your brother and sisters and your dad (and sometimes, all of us together!). There are so many things in this life that I’ve come to accept that I won’t be able to share with you like I will be able to with your siblings. Obviously, considering that I didn’t start modeling and acting until after you means that I’ll never get to work with you.
But then one day I walked onto set to shoot a commercial and my breath left my body with such suddenness and severity I nearly passed out on the threshold of the home I had just entered. There, in front of me, was a table FILLED with photographs. One photograph, to be exact — but repeated in all different sizes and strewn about like it was just any other day and any other photo. And it was, for everyone else except for you and me. You see, for this particular shoot, the client had asked me to submit photos of our family to use as set decoration and props. And so I combed through the folders on my laptop grabbing photos I thought were cute and sent them on their way.
And the one photo they had chosen to use to demonstrate their wall-safe tape, that they printed out at every size imaginable and placed them on that table trying to decide which one to use, was a picture of your daddy, brother and I… and you. At 18 weeks. The last family photo before we found out you were sick. Before we knew we didn’t have much time left with you. When life was just our happy family of four at a pumpkin patch. So sometimes the world does pause for a moment for me and you, baby girl, so that we can spend some time together. And even though it may not be the same way I do with your siblings, that day I got to bring YOU to work. And truly, I knew it was just a photograph. Just like a coffee is just coffee. But these moments in time are all I have now. And I will cherish the time spent wrapped up in my memories and you.
This one’s for you, sweet girl….
Love,
mama