Back again..

Well... wow! Where have I been??  I have received so many emails and messages in the last couple months checking in. I cannot tell you how much it warms my heart to know complete strangers find time enough in their days to check on me and see how I am doing. Well... life has been giving me something to be busy about! With the recent new job, the training was intense and the hours were something to get used to. Waking up at 3 AM and not getting home until 4 PM (sometimes 7 PM) took a toll on this 8-5 girl. The couch was like quicksand. As soon as I sat.. that's all she wrote. I wasn't getting up and I wasn't going to do anything else that required too much thought or effort. Unfortunately my little safe haven suffered. Oh how I have missed this space. Each night I would go to bed thinking about what I would have blogged about. I have finally gotten it together, and here I am... hopefully at full force again. There's blogs to catch up with, people to talk to and things to be said. So I am happy to say I am here to stay.. and although I may not have a blog a day as I did before.. there will be more then one every couple months! After all, I owe it to this space and the wonderful people I've 'met' to a part of my healing.
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Well, this past Sunday was 7 months. 7 months since she's been gone. That point is coming where she has been dead longer then alive. She lived for an entire 7 months and 15 days. I'm not sure why this 'milestone' ways so heavily on my heart. More then Mother's Day or even Easter. I dread this day more then I even dread her first angel-versary. Mostly I think because it signifies time lost. It means we have begun to make more memories in her death then in her life. That is what pains me most. I will have more memories of going to her gravesite, of sending balloons to heaven, of sitting in her room trying to imagine her still there.. then I will of actual feasible memories of her. I won't get to see her first steps, her first day of school. I'm only left with my imagination. And now that it comes that she's been gone longer then she was alive.. I am forced to realize the reality of my life.

I can say though, that I do have better days now. Not so many bad. Surviving has become second nature. In the beginning, it was an everyday struggle. Now it's a kind of new normal. Although the sting doesn't hurt as much, the hole doesn't seem quite as hollow, and the black hole seems to have started to form a bottom.. there are days where the black hole bottoms out and the light disappears. I suspect it will always be like this forever and ever. That's something that I can't seem to wrap my whole brain around. As of now, I have gone 7 months and 2 days without her. I have made it to this point when I didn't even think I would make it through a single hour, day or week. So to keep going.. well it should just get easier right? That's what I hope for. And for the most part it is more bearable. But it's the quiet moments that it becomes difficult. It's the moments of stillness and empty that I miss her most. The times when I come home to an empty home and clean floors. The holidays don't seem to bother me as much. It's the smaller stuff I miss. It's the small stuff that matters.

Her room still remains her room. Her smell still ever so present. It's faint, but it's there. I can't imagine not walking into her room and not smelling her sweet smell. All her things still in their places... I have thought about boxing it up and putting it in the attic. I even went so far as to get boxes. I placed her blankets from the linen closet in there and her bathroom stuff.. but that's as far as I got. I can't bring myself to physically take her clothes from the hangers hanging in the closet. I can't take her dirty clothes out of the hamper and wash them and put them away. I can't move the pillow from her changer that still has an ever so apparent imprint of her sweet little head. I can't take the diapers out her diaper holder. The powder, the butt paste, the wipes and warmer are still in its place. I can't imagine it being any other way. I know she's gone. And I know she's not coming back. But if I pack it all up.. it feels as if I'm packing her up with it. I've accepted her fate, I've accepted my 'new life' but I can't accept the fact that I have to let her go. To me, if I let go.. I'm letting go of all she was and is.

I have finally gotten to a point that I've let go of her death. Every now and then a flash of that night will succomb my mind, but I have let go of finding any meaning in it. It used to be that I re-ran that day over and over.. figuring out what I could have done differently. If I was just a couple minutes later or ahead.. maybe if I fed her something different.. or dressed her in something differently. Maybe if I burped her longer or even less.. maybe I should have stayed home. I have now come to accept that no matter the circumstances, the place or the time. She still would have gone. There was nothing I could have done to change that. As a mother it seemed an impossible conclusion. I am her protector, her caregiver. But in 7 months, the results haven't changed. And beating myself up, questioning my abilities as a mother didn't change a damn thing. It still remains--it is what it is. Finding an 'answer' as to 'why' or 'how' will not change the outcome. So, I have let it go. Let go of the death. Let go of the questioniong. And in doing so, I have found that it doesn't mean I love her less. It doesn't mean that the other good memories will go away too. What I have found is that the good memories have come flooding back. Small details I had forgotten came into focus. It's like that file folder in my mind finally got unlocked. And now, I can be happy when I think of her. I can smile when I see her picture. I can laugh as I think of all the good times. And I can do this without the horrendous day of November 12 haunting near.

It's not to say I don't think of that day, I do. Who wouldn't? But I no longer question that day. I allow that day to be what it is and I don't let it define who I am. I don't let it define my daughter's life. Because that's the thing.. I know she died.. I am reminded of it everyday.. but what I want to remember and I want the world to know is that she lived. She lived and she loved and I am thankful everyday for those 7 months and 15 days she was allowed with me.

I just love her face in this one. She had many of them!