Slip Sliding Away...

I've been crying a lot this month.  Sobbing actually.  There are lots of reasons for this...all of the reasons linked to the same events.

I'm weeping because they would have been three this month.

I'm wiping my eyes because I could have had twins.

I'm sniffling because I feel guilty for wanting something I can not have.  Ever.

I'm gasping for air because it still hurts that they are gone.

I'm feeling my heart race because the agony of that pain has short circuited my body's electrical patterns.  Maybe permanently. 

I'm holding my face in my hands because I'm supposed to be all better, according to others, now that my lovely rainbow baby is actually HERE at my breast.  And yet....I'm still crying inside.

It's not that I don't feel the soothing balm of rainbow baby loveliness.  It's not that she isn't AMAZING in every way.  It's not that.  It's that I lost my twins.  I think I thought it would stop hurting somehow.  I think I thought I really wouldn't feel the pain so acutely anymore.  I think I thought that after three years....

I'd maybe...forget?

Or maybe I'd...just smile at the memory of people who should have been...but didn't get to BE?

Or perhaps I'd...just....

be stronger.

But I'm not. 

And that has to be okay with me. 

It's April.  It hit me hard today as I walked in the woods with that amazing man who, for whatever reason, still seems to love me like there is never going to be a tomorrow.  Our little miss V. was on my back, gazing at the world around her in a perky little bonnet.  Her big blue eyes competing with the sky for brilliance.  Her sweet milky aroma bringing a smile to my lips.  I held the warm, strong hand that has never left my side for 17 years.  I watched my cutie pie sheepdog lope up ahead to catch the disk flying up ahead of us every few hundred feet.  *my husband has a thing for folf...*  And I saw them....

Purple and yellow flowers.  They are here again.  Because they are here every year at this time. 

Purple and yellow flowers.  All over the woods. 

And I remembered. 

I remembered dying.  I remembered seeing our twins.  Holding them.  Talking to them.  Not wanting to leave them.  I remembered.

My throat closed up. 

I gripped his hand. 

And I said..."They would have been three years old."

He knew what I meant.  We stopped and looked at each other.  I saw him looking at our 7 month old daughter.  Our rainbow.  I saw the tears well in his eyes and took note as the muscle in his jaw set to work. 

There are two people on this earth who miss two people not on this earth more than we can bear.  There is a family in the mountains that remembers it is not complete. 

There is a hole that isn't filled by other babies.  No matter how perfect and wonderful they are.

Our rainbow girl is a new person.  She isn't a replacement.

She isn't a substitute.

She is our wonderful baby girl.  We adore her.  She is lovely and enchanting in every way.

To think she could replace our little twins is ludicrous.  She didn't replace them.  She is her own person.  She should have had twin brothers who were three years old.  Twin brothers who would have made her smile just as her other wonderful brothers do.  It could have been that way. 

It could have been.

Instead,  it isn't.

And that makes me weep every time I see purple and yellow flowers.

Time passes so quickly.  It moves right past us.  When you have lost a child, others want to have that mean that you are "all better".  That you too have moved on.

That isn't how it works.

You remember.

You just try not to let others know you remember.  but, not for you or your well being...for them and their preference to forget what they wish they never knew in the first place.  

What a crazy world.