Only Half Full

We have the ashes sitting safely on a shelf.

They are still in a plastic container provided by the mortuary. We didn't buy an urn, because we plan to release the ashes near and around the "mother rock" near the twin pines in the wooded gully near my home. It is a healing place. It is a place surrounded by yellow and purple flowers. It is full of the vibration of my babies.

But something in me feels like that little plastic container is only half full.

There is something missing. My other twins ashes are missing. It somehow seems...incomplete to put the ashes of only one baby there. There were two of them. One in a little plastic container of ashes...and one in the hospital dumpster in a red bio hazard bag. One that we knew about, and birthed, held, and kissed goodbye. One that stayed hidden inside until my body tried to flush his body out by hemorrhaging a month later, only to have to be removed by a metal object in pieces. I never saw him. Didn't even know he had been there until we left the hospital. Too late to do anything about his remains. Too late.

But...he was there. He was there. He stayed with me as long as he could hold on, or maybe it was only as long as I could hold on...I'm not sure which way it was. The only thing I am certain of is that he WAS there.

They were both there. My babies were there...and are still all around me in spirit. I can feel them. So close, and yet so far away.

I would have loved them so much. Would have loved to hold smiling twins in my arms.

I want to put the ashes around the rock that led us to discovering our little Simon...our secret twin. I want to be able to visit that place, and be with my twins again. I want to tell them how much I wanted to hold their hands, and skip in the waves of the ocean one day. I want to tell them how my arms ache for them.

I want to tell Simon that I am sorry I didn't know he was there...that I am sorry he was lost and overlooked.
I want to tell Alexander that I miss his tiny little hands and feet and precious angel face...that I wish he could have heard the song I sang to him in those last hours together.

I wish they had opened their eyes and seen how very much I love them both. I wish that they were still safe inside me, waiting to be born alive into this family that would have adored them.

I have the ashes of one of my twins. Just ashes. I have to believe that it's not the important part. I have to believe that my other twin isn't diminished just because I never saw him..never held him...don't have his ashes to sprinkle in the place that was given to us as a place to connect with spirit...with our babies. Sprinkling the ashes is a ritual...a ritual of love and respect of a person.

I will ask my twins to know that I am giving them both to the earth when we sprinkle that little jar that is only half full of the life that was loved within me.

There is nothing else I can do.