4 weeks

Four weeks since Grace was born still... It seems like it was yesterday.  I think often about how soft her skin was and how good she smelled.

My poor husband Mark is having so much trouble this week.  He says that the grief has been unrelenting.  I wish that I could do more for him, but I know that we both just need to experience the pain, that is part of the price of loving her.  I have heard that there is no closure for babyloss parents and that sounds and feels true, perhaps solace and peace are the most we can hope for.

I have been thinking about the magic of life recently.  As a scientist I understand the cellular process of reproduction and embryology, but when we were struggling with infertility all the science and medicine in the world did not result in life.  We were in Kauai, thinking that we would start trying for a baby again when we got home.  And there by the ocean without FSH injections or Clomid or OPKs or even measuring basal body temperature life began within me.  There is magic in that.  The fact that I knew the baby inside me, knew her and who she was without ever hearing her voice, or seeing her eyes is such magic.  I so hope to experience that magic again some day.

My grief counselor said that next visit we were to discuss where I thought Grace's spirit was since that can affect the grief process.  The truth is I don't know what I believe.  The Christian notion of a heaven is a beautiful idea, and a comforting one, but I don't know that I have believed in it for some time.  Before having Grace I thought, from a very scientific and rational place, that the afterlife was not a conscious plane of existence for us, and that our immortality was achieved by being remembered by the living whose lives and hearts we touched.  That concept made sense to me then.  Now it feels very hollow, since I am not the one leaving the world and the living behind, my infant daughter is.  Now the concept that her spirit is not out there, somewhere is horrifying to me.  Reincarnation and Nirvana are too foreign for me.  What else is there?  There is something about the magic that I was talking about before that feels right and comforting like her spirit could be in the wind and the waves and trees and all around me.  I know that I am not afraid to die since when my time comes in some way I will get to be with her again.

Mother and Daughter