The sun rose this morning to a beautiful fall day. Quite perfect in fact. Perfect despite the shearing pain that has sat at the back of my throat for the past 7 weeks. Seven weeks ago today I held Winona in my arms for the last time. Memories are everywhere; the trail she left on my belly, the smell of her hat boxed up in my room (in hopes that the smell never leaves it), videos and pictures. These are all we have left from the five days life gave us.
Sometimes, even when the sun rises to reveal a gorgeous fall day, I hate life for taking my daughter away. I hate that I was that 1 out of 10,000 people to have lost their child to Trisomy 13. I hate that all around me are people with healthy babies, siblings, families. I hate that I have only a memory left of my daughter, a memory so small it feels like it could just slip away. I fear that my memory of her, held in my hands close to my heart, will grow weaker until it slips through the spaces between my fingers. And then what will I have left in this life?
My mom told me that "life is for the living." Life is breathing, building, loving and trusting that things will work out as they should. Life is living each sunrise that you are given, acknowledging each token of hope. Life is also vulnerable to pain. We all experience pain and loss. It is figuring out how to keep on when life takes away. We are the living. Life is our gift.
"I feel the equivalence of pain and beauty, how each precipitates the other. I realize that its this paradox that makes me love the world; its this that makes me want to pinion my own tiny scrap of time or to hold my life in my arms as much of it as I can gather, like daisies." excerpt from the book Shadow Child, an apprenticeship on love and loss, by Beth Powers
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