Suzanne: Right Where I Am 2017: 3 years

Dear Lucia,

Happy birthday to you, my missing one. It is hard to imagine us with a 3 year old but that is what you would be, full of spunk and spitfire like your sisters, I imagine. As I have each year so far, I'm taking today off work to be with myself and to think of you. I found a meditation garden today, which happened to be more full of tourists than I had anticipated, but it gave me a place to slow down for a beat.

There is so much life commotion this year. C is getting ready to start kindergarten. We got a new dog. G is 18 months old and busy with all the new things 18 month olds do. In past years, your birthday has had more lead up and anticipation. It had a looming about it. But this year, it almost snuck up. I was so distracted by so many other things and then one day looked at my calendar and went "oh" when I saw it coming. This sneaking up gave me more than a few moments of pause (with a splash of worry mixed in), wondering if this is where I start forgetting. If this is the beginning of you getting lost in the shuffle, of you losing your place in our family.

In my more reflective moments, I know that isn't true. You will not be an afterthought or a footnote or an asterisk attached to our family story. You are etched in all the places that matter; forgetting you is just not possible. But the intensity of the grief is slipping away and I guess it is natural for the looming element to slip away with it.

So much has changed about the grief. In the early days, I felt like I could hardly breathe most of the time. My brain was consumed by thoughts of you. I was regularly preoccupied with what ifs and they made my heart race, as if just thinking about what could have been done differently would have erased and changed something. Back then, everything hurt and everything was hard and it was like that for so long.

But as these things do, as everyone told me it would, it evolved. It transitioned into a less panicked state that was more just continual longing. Then the longing faded to a dull missing. And now - I don't know. I guess now is something in the neighborhood of moving forward. There are less sharp and griefy edges poking at me, which is nice. I don't randomly cry at work or the grocery store - also nice. Right now feels like deep acceptance lightly stained by both gratitude and sadness. Moving forward means that your birthday can sneak up because I'm not dreading or anticipating or holding my breath for it.

When tears come now, I often feel like I'm crying more for us than for you, for that other version of us that a really crappy thing happened to. Watching it back feels, I imagine, like what it must been like for our close family and friends. Heartbreaking. Powerless. I try to avoid getting too caught up in the replay of what surrounded your birth and death by reminding myself that this limited slice of your life and ours was only, as one therapist said early on, the middle. There was so much before and there has been so much after that is tremendously more beautiful and that is what I would rather remember. So when I feel like you are slipping further away, I tell myself that maybe the only thing that is slipping away is the painful part. We are tethered together, you and I. Interwoven in the ways mothers and babies are. We can wander from each other but not far.

So tonight, we ate the cake C and I baked for you this morning. We didn't have a number '3' candle and C, for some reason, didn't want 3 individual candles so we used a number '2' candle plus a single candle to make 3. We sang a happy birthday to you. We went outside and let ladybugs out in the yard, as we've done each year. Your summer birthday means it's light and warm out until bedtime so we let the girls play outside until then. G laughed excitedly watching the new dog. C chattered to the freed ladybugs and tried to coax them onto various surfaces. G did this funny thing where she took the ladybug container when C wasn't watching and ran away with it yelling "noooo!", like a preview of C chasing her and shouting no at her (which is exactly what happened). Your dad and I sat and quietly watched. To me, it felt sad and peaceful and, quite honestly, amazing too. I'm some ways, our family (you included) feels just right.

So, little love, I hope you heard us singing for you tonight. I hope you know I think of you daily. I hope you are somewhere, some wise little soul fluttering around us, sprinkling us with little gentle whispers. As always and until my last breath, I love you very fiercely.

Mom

~~~~~

You can read Suzanne’s previous post here:

Right Where I Am 2014: 3 weeks 3 days

Lynne: Right Where I Am 2017: 4 years 8 days

Last Thursday marked 4 years since the day Findlay was born, tiny, silent and still. For some reason I found this year to be harder than I thought I would. The old cliche of time being a great healer isn't always true.

The days leading up to his birthday are always hard as everything involuntarily replays over and over in my subconscious - the scan, consultant appointments, the fear and devastation then one of the saddest but without a doubt best days of my life. The day my first precious son was born. The day that Findlay made me a mummy.

Last week I found myself feeling guilty a lot as we had the chaos of a house move collapsing at the last minute so I didn't get to devote as much time to Findlay as I would have liked. At the end of a busy day though I lit a candle and took some time to reflect and think about my precious boy. In reality there's not a day that goes by that I don't think of Findlay and wonder what he would be like.

Never more so than when I look at his little brother, Cameron, who turned 3, 3 days before Findlay's birthday. Looking at their pictures I know they would have looked similar but I'll never know what little personality Findlay would have developed. Cameron loves playing with other children and I feel sad knowing that he has missed out on playing with his big brother.

Alongside the chaos of my thoughts however I am constantly reminded and thankful for the love and support shown to me by my amazing family and friends who continue to mark Findlay's special dates and say his name. This is the most important thing to me that my baby is remembered always.

Right where I am - I am breathing, I smile but my heart still aches x

~~~~~

You can read Lynne’s previous posts here:

Right Where I Am 2016: 2 years 11 months

Right Where I Am 2015: 1 year 10 months 2 weeks 1 day

Julz: Right Where I Am 2017: 5 years 3 months 26 days

Five years, three months, 26 days.

Or 1943 days.

2,797,920 minutes.

I have no idea where the time has gone. Our lives have moved away from the day we last saw her so quickly. There are times where really it all only feels like yesterday. The thoughts return to those days and weeks around her life and death seems so raw, so new.

How can it be five years already? It really is such a significant amount of time to have passed; so many things that are now becoming more obvious that she is missing. Of course this year she should have been going into Year One, with her younger sister heading to Reception. I was meant to have three children at the school at the same time. A missed school report and end of year photos, which include the first and last days of schools.

I really thought that everything would get better, everything would return to the normal I once knew before she died, maybe even before she was born. So many people told me it would get easier, that time would have healed everything; the pain lessens but not because I’m getting over the death of her, but because I know how to treat the pain.

I was recently diagnosed with Arthritis, it hurts, although I am still very early days I know it will always hurt. I use over the counter medications - my choice, it takes the edge off. I’m neither expected to forget about it or suffer in silence, to ignore the situation that I am in. So far I find some days are okay, no pain I can walk without limping. Other days my whole body just hurts, no matter how I sit or stand there is no comfort. These days I am never expected to just “get over it”.

This for me is what it is like to grieve my daughter, how the time has dealt with our loss. The pain of her death will always remain, I won’t ever heal. I have found ways of coping, and have also discovered the ways in which I don’t cope; I really am okay with that. For me personally it is important to have the rougher days, it keeps my daughter from slipping away completely, these rougher days don’t happen a lot now, but they do. It is just another realisation that I will never be the same; I’ll never be the person I once was, before her death, even before the moment she was born early.

I’ll never know the daughter I once held and fed, or know the colour of her eyes, or how her hair colour would have been. I never got to dry her tears, she rarely cried when we were there, we never got to make her laugh.

These are just a few things that show that I will never be the same person, and that I will never be over the death of our girl; that no matter how many years go by I will still forever miss our girl.

I couldn’t get her to stay.

I wanted her to stay.

~~~~~

You can read Julz' previous posts here:

Right Where I Am 2016: 4 years 3 months
Right Where I Am 2015: 3 years 3 months 26 days

Right Where I Am 2014: 2 years 2 months 3 weeks 4 days

Right Where I Am 2013: 1 year 3 months 4 days

Juliet: Right Where I Am 2017: 8 months 15 days

You were supposed to be our rainbow.

We had passed the stages of our previous losses, you were really coming. This was really happening, we were on the home stretch. We were on the countdown...two. Two. I've never wiped the chalk from the board. Two days.

Two days until you were supposed to be here and you were gone. Our precious, longed for, wanted, loved, baby girl had died.

It's hard to remember the very first days and weeks after we lost you. Not because I can't, but because even remembering that depth of darkness is difficult.  It's hard to look back to the   days where I could do nothing. The days when the darkness was all I could see. The days when I could barely breathe. The days when the grief that felt so much like fear was all I could feel.  It's still dark sometimes. It's dark but we can breathe.

So where are we now? We're juggling. Juggling the pain of losing you. Juggling learning to live without you. Juggling the guilt. Juggling the hope.

Your little brother is set to arrive 5 days after your first birthday. I can't call him my rainbow. You were my rainbow. I can't feel the same excitement for his arrival as I did for yours. I'm too scared to do that. But I love him.  I love him, as I love your big sister, and as I love you.

I want you to know you will always be a part of our lives. You have changed us all irrevocably. We will always love you and we speak your name every day.

I’m so grateful to have known you. Those who don't know may question how I can have known you, but I did. I do. I am so grateful for all the gifts you have given me - new friends I feel I've know forever, a gratitude for what I have and a desire to do more and be more. But I wish every day that we never had to say goodbye to you. I still question why and have so many 'what ifs', I wonder if that will ever pass.

Right where I am is a difficult place. I hope and pray every day that you know that we still love you beyond words. I hope you know that you will always be ours and we will always be yours. Death cannot change that. Life cannot change that.

You are etched into my heart and soul, Grace Elizabeth.  I love you, I miss you.