So many emotions

I've had an extremely busy couple of days.  Too much to really feel anything, but now that it's calming, it's all crowding around in my head.

Yesterday we went to help a friend move in to her new house.  She works with my husband, and she invited another coworker who brought her daughter.  Her daughter Cora.

Matt had the gracious foresight to warn me, so meeting her wasn't too bad.  And she's 12, nowhere near my Cora's would-be age.  No, the hard part was hearing Erin and Patrick running around yelling to her, coming back and telling me how much fun they were having with her, how much they liked Cora.  I miss having that name used like that in my house.  It's weird to say I "miss" it too, because I never got to experience it in the first place, but there isn't really a word for how I feel about it.  I hate that Cora is more of an abstract concept than an actual person in my home.


And today is an anniversary of my greatest regret, possibly.  I was thrown a small baby shower by 3 of my friends, it was just the four of us, but it was nice.  Someone asked me how I was feeling, and I said "I almost don't care about the baby anymore, I just don't want to pregnant and sick anymore."

Cora died the next night.

If Only

Every year I try really hard not to relive the last week of Cora's life.  And I always fail utterly.  Every year I think about what I was doing on a particular day.  And it starts today, April 26th (a Wednesday), the day of my last regular OB appointment.  I was 37 1/2 weeks, and having fairly regular contractions and a LOT of pain/pressure "down under" on top of still being horribly sick like I had been the entire pregnancy. I was very ready to be done with the whole pregnancy thing.  Not only that, but my brother was graduating in Utah that weekend, and my parents would be only a 3 hour drive from me (as opposed to an 11 or so hour drive), so I asked him if he would induce me.

But I was healthy, the baby was healthy, and their policy stood against elective inductions before 39 weeks, so he refused.  I figured it was a long shot, but was still disappointed.

Cora died Sunday night.

If only he'd agreed.  I can't help but run through it in my head.  What might have happened if he'd agreed?

Of course, there's no answer to that.  It's quite possible with her cord where it was that she might have not made it through labor, even with an emergency csection.  But she might have.

Words cannot describe how desperately I want to hear that cry.  To see her open her eyes and look at me. And it hurts so tremendously that I didn't get to.  I had that ripped from me.

The person I was died with her.  Someone else walks in her place.  I like to think that this new person I am is better, more kind, more compassionate, more patient, a better mother.  More appreciative of every moment I DO have.  But, days like today, I really miss the person I was.  I miss the future she was going to have.

I miss my baby girl.

Columbine

Today was the 13th anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre.  I've reflected a lot on that day since moving to Littleton, and even more today, my first anniversary here.

I was a sophomore in high school, and I was sick that day, so I stayed home.  I don't quite remember how the news got turned on, I was probably flipping through channels and saw something, but I watched the whole thing through.  I spend the day crying, watching in horror as the terrorized students ran towards the news cameras.  I couldn't understand how someone could commit such senseless violence.

I've been taking the kids to Columbine library for almost a year now, many times playing at the park next door.  I'd seen signs for the Columbine memorial, but I'd never been over to see it.  And I honestly had no clue that the high school was just over the hill.

It was really beautiful.  I had no idea it would have that much of an emotional impact on me.  The atmosphere was quite reverent as we walked in.  Even Erin felt it, she was shushing Patrick.  I didn't know any of those who had been killed, but I it still hurt so much to see.  So many lives lost.

Each victim had a plaque with whatever the family felt appropriate to put on it, and one plaque, Rachel Joy Scott's, had something she had written about a month prior.

"I have this theory that if one person can go out of their way to show compassion, then it will start a chain reaction of the same. People will never know how far a little kindness can go."

Wouldn't the world be a better place if we all learned to do just that?