Monday, December 22, 2014

Sacred Ground

I sometimes stand above her headstone and wonder how it is even possible that I am standing over my daughter’s grave. Five and half years later and I still have trouble believing this all really to happened us. To her.

I know that everything that she was going to be, does not exist here. I know that energy does not die, & hers was released into the universe and it exists in a sense, in a realm, that I, we, cannot understand. I know that who the baby, the little girl, the woman, that she would’ve become, now exists in my, in our, hearts and mind. I feel her there. I see her there. 

But this place where her body lays, next to my father and my grandfather, is still very sacred. It holds the beautiful baby girl I was lucky to carry for almost 8 months. I can still see her pearly pink coffin sitting above her resting spot, the image burned into my mind. I see it every. single. day. It’s not something any parent should have to experience. I often wonder how I walked away from her that day. How I left her there, alone. The shock and awe still had a grip on me and wouldn’t wear off until weeks later. If her funeral had been held at a later date, they would have had to drag me kicking and screaming away from her. And if they tried, I would have asked to go with her. Grace was lost from me as the weight of grief consumed my soul, and then just as I may have asked, I ended up being buried alive by the sorrow and anguish. 

We’ve recently moved away from our hometown. I am now quite a drive away from her. There is a part of me that feels guilty for “leaving” her, as does Jonathan. Mother’s guilt is a guilt of it’s own kind. It keeps us up at night worrying about what we may have done wrong that day with our children. But a surviving parent’s guilt, that is guilt in it’s cruelest form. Until you’ve learned to manage it, and even after you have learned to keep it at bay, it eats at your soul with “what-ifs” and “should’ve beens”…. I know it’s silly. I know she’s not there. But I have had to leave her too many times. In the hospital, at the funeral home, at the cemetery. I had to pick up the pieces of my shattered life and learn to move on, one day at a time, after she died. Without her. And though we know we are doing what is needed to honor her life and live ours, moving on feels at times like betrayal. We know, with certainty and clarity that it is not, but that is what survivor’s guilt does best. Makes the irrational seem rational. 

I am so thankful for the place I am at today. Five and half years of navigating & nurturing my grief has landed me back on my feet. The trickiness of balancing life’s joys and sorrows can be tough at times, but I am doing it. I am living again. Loving. Laughing. But there is always a part of me that is always longing, for her. Especially during this season.

Merry Christmas baby girl.


We love you and wish you were here. 






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