Year 12.

It seems like such a very long time to be missing someone.


At age 12 in my church, girls graduate from the primary sunday school into the "Young Women" program.  At the beginning of each year, they hold a "New Beginnings" program.  It is sort of a preview of the year for the girls, and a welcome for all those who will be turning 12 that year.  Cora would be turning 12 this year.  New Beginnings is this week.

She should be there.

I should be there with her.

We should be excitedly preparing for this new step in her life.  I should be watching as she grows up too fast into the woman I'd imagined her becoming all through my pregnancy with her.


I should
I should
I should.


Should is the hardest part.


Actually, no it's not.  The hardest part is the havoc 12 years has wreaked on my memories of her.  I don't remember what she smelled like.  I don't remember what she felt like.  Except for the few pictures we took, I don't even really remember what she looked like.

My body betrayed me by allowing her to die, and now my mind is betraying me by allowing her to be erased.  My mortal, imperfect brain.  It seems so unfair. Sometimes it feels no more real than a bad dream.

But she really was here.  She really did exist.  She really is mine.

And I miss her.

My last "first"

Cora's due date was May 14th, 2006, but whenever I was asked when I was due I just answered "Mother's Day!"  It's been 11 years, but today is the first time since that May 14th and Mother's Day have coincided.  I have had 11 Mother's Days, 9 with a child in my arms, and 11 due dates, but this is the first time since the first one that have had the both happening together.  And it hurts.

Not only that but the Primary Sunday school group sings to the congregation for the mothers, and today would have been the only time all 5 of my children would have been up there to sing for me. Primary is for kids aged 3-11, and Owen is 3 this year.  Next year Cora would have been 12 already and not singing.  It was kind of a tender mercy to me that Owen refused to go up with his siblings.  Even if Cora had been here, it wouldn't have been all 5 kids.

But up until that moment, I was dreading it.

I have been dreading today.

Sometimes grief sneaks up on you.  It comes out of left field and bowls you over.  But then there are times, like today, when it's like standing on a beach waiting for a tsunami.  Standing on the beach, watching the water retreat, knowing what's coming and being unable to move, hoping that the crash of grief doesn't drown you.

Thankfully, in my experience, emotional tsunamis aren't as fatal as actual ones.

But that doesn't mean that you aren't bruised.

That doesn't mean that you don't need time to recover.

That doesn't mean it doesn't hurt.



I am so grateful for the four babies I get to hold this Mother's Day.  But my heart aches for the one I don't.

Another year without her.

This is my 10th one.  My 10th New Year without my Cora.  It seems astounding to me.  Time is so strange.  I can close my eyes and it seems just like the first one...life forever altered.  Hurt, angry, wondering why it had to happen to me.  One more day down the line.  One more day further away.

And yet sometimes, when I open my eyes, it's almost as if she was never here.  And that hurts more I think.  Life goes on, and while I think of her every day, it isn't always with tears.  But sometimes, those days and months and years feel unbearable.  How many more must I endure?  I'll be 34 this year, I'm hoping for at least 50 more.

It helps if I turn it around.  Each day is one day closer to seeing her again.  One day less of the 50 more years.  I'm not suicidal, but I don't fear death.  I'm looking forward to seeing my sweet Cora again.

Until then, I speak her name.  Because, according to the Egyptian Book of the Dead "To speak the name of the dead is to make him live again.  It restores the breath of life to him that is vanished."


I love you Cora Rei.

100 pounds

It's Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day.  Only for those of us who are living it, every day is Remembrance Day.
Not a day goes by that I don't think about her.

Not a day goes by that I don't miss her.

Most days, I can smile wistfully and remember the beauty she brought to my life.  And it's sad, but it's sweet too.  Like when monarch butterflies are your "symbol" for your angel, and it's monarch migration season, and you see 67 on a twenty minute walk.

But some days, like today, you break down into wracking sobs in the shower.


This grief, it's like carrying around a weight.  100 pounds.  At first, you are knocked over, and it's suffocating.  At first it crushes you.

But like anything, when you bear it long enough you start to adjust.  Muscles grow stronger.  Soon, you can walk around, carrying it like it's nothing.

But it still weighs 100 pounds.


It's been 10 years, 5 months, 1 week and 6 days since Cora was stillborn.  It's been 10 years, 5 months and 2 weeks since my doctor told me her heart was no longer beating and my world was changed forever.

It still hurts as badly today as it did then. It still weighs 100 pounds.  But somehow I have grown to bear it.  Some days I hardly even notice I'm carrying it.

But some days, like today, I look at it closely and I feel every ounce.

Happy birthday

So Cora's birthday is always emotionally loaded.  Actually, the whole week leading up to it is.  I always think of the "lasts," whether I try to or not.  But our traditions for Cora's birthday usually give me happy high points too.

Every year we raise caterpillars to have butterflies to release around Cora's birthday.  This is the 6th (or 7th, I can't quite remember when exactly we started doing it) year we've done butterflies for her, and have only actually released them on her birthday maybe twice.  This year, the forecast called for rain on the second, and cooler temps (which was accurate) for the 2nd, so we ended up releasing the butterflies on May 1st.  Which was actually good.  Because May 1st is a really hard day for me, being the day that we received the news that she had died.  I usually do something that day to distract myself, but since May 1st this year was on a Sunday, and I try not to go out or purchase anything on Sundays, releasing the butterflies ended up being good.

I then allowed myself some time to sit under a tree and cry while the kids were playing.  I do a "photo of the day" thing on instagram and May 1st's prompt was "blue," which perfectly described my feelings.  I don't normally take pictures of myself crying.

And then the day of her birthday we went to IHOP for dinner.  A few years ago (maybe 2013?), Erin decided it would be Cora's favorite place to eat, so we have eaten there for her birthday every year since.  Owen was hiding under the table yelling "No pitoh!"

And then we came home for cake.  It was a strawberry shortcake, made on a homemade angel food cake.  And it was delicious.  And while I was at the store, I passed those candles, and it felt like Cora was yelling at me to get them instead of the normal numeral candles I usually do.  It made me happy, to feel like she is participating in her birthday.

It's hard.  I feel like I walk around seeing holes in my family.  But I am so glad her siblings know her and do things to honor her.  They talk about her, and it is so sweet.

Happy birthday sweet Cora.
I love you so much.

If Only....

I have tried to live my life without regret.  I don't think I mean that the way most people do...most of the time I work so that I don't have anything in my past that I would regret, but when there are those things, I try to fix things, forgive myself (and others) and move on.

But then certain regrets stick around.  Those usually are the ones that I couldn't change if I tried, and with what I knew at the time, made the best decision I could. The regret only comes from hindsight.

10 years ago today, I made a statement.  I was so close to the end of my pregnancy.  A pregnancy which totally surprised me in its misery, and I was just hanging on to the hope that once I wasn't pregnant anymore, I wouldn't be sick anymore. 

"I almost don't care about the baby, I just don't want to be sick anymore."

How could I have known that in 3 mere days, I wouldn't be sick anymore.  And I wouldn't have the baby either.

51 weeks a year I have forgiven myself for this.  But this week?  The last week of April, the last week of Cora's life.  This week, it hurts.  And I know no other way but to FEEL it.  This week I let the wracking sobs come until I can't breathe.


I know she'll be mine forever.  I know I will see her again one day.  Reminding me of that doesn't help it not hurt right now.  


This sucks.  I hate that anyone has to be here.

#stillhissister

Patrick has been talking a lot about Cora lately.  I'm not sure why, but I remember Erin doing the same thing at about the same age.  Maybe as their understanding of death matures, their need to connect does too.  Anyway, he's been "reminding" me that she's still a part of our family a lot.

In the car today, on the way to the store, Allison and Patrick got into an argument. She counted 6 people in our family and Patrick kept insisting that she was wrong, and there were 7.  And he kept getting upset about it.  So I had to explain that they are both right.  It is okay to just count the people in the car, because Cora died and isn't with us anymore, so every day there are just 6 of us.  But since Cora IS still part of our family, Patrick is right too, and she counts.  She is still his sister.

At the store I walked into the garden center looking for some iris bulbs and was surprised by more Cora Vincas.  I had actually forgotten about them, and was delighted.  And of course bought some.

Well, Patrick found out that they were called Cora and insisted on helping me plant them in the empty spot I found by my tree.

This is the second time in as many days that she's popped out at me.  Yesterday I found a garden fairy with red hair and purple wings.  Erin and Allison have been asking for a garden fairy for ages, but it was the first time one really felt like she belonged in my garden. (what little of a garden I have anyway)

It is nice to get her popping up like that.  Today is the anniversary of my first "last," the last pregnant picture I have with her, and April is always hard for me.  So to have her manifesting, especially this year (the big 10), is nice.

Footprints

I am sometimes ashamed at how infrequently I post here.  It doesn't mean I don't think about my Cora.  She is never far from my thoughts and heart.  And even recently I have had some fairly hard days.  I just don't think about posting.

Anyway, about a year ago I wanted do do a hand print art with my kids, but wanted to include Cora, so I decided I was going to trace her foot print.  When I pulled she sheet with the two prints on it from the memory box of cards and such I was devastated that they were so faded you could barely see them.  It broke my heart, and has bothered me since.

Fast forward to a couple nights ago.  I opened a box of trinkets and things that I packed up when we moved right after Erin was born, and haven't opened since.  Owen, being his 2-year-old self has been pulling boxes out from where they're stacked under a counter and standing or sitting on them, so I wanted to check to see if anything was broken.  And inside I found a 4x6 picture in a frame.  This picture is of a feather that was laying on the gravel beside Jenny Lake the night before Matt and I (and a sister of mine and a sister of his) spread her ashes there.  A single solitary feather with nothing around it.  When I saw it, I felt profoundly that it was a sign that Cora was there with us.  When I scrapbooked spreading her ashes, I wanted to include that picture, and left a space for it, even though I couldn't find that particular frame.  So for nearly 9 years, there has just been a space waiting for it.

Needless to say, I forgot *which* book that page was in.  And so I pulled out Cora's scrapbook (it wasn't in hers, it was in the one I have for me and Matt), and a just a few pages in, there were her foot prints.  Her REAL foot prints.  I had forgotten that they had taken several sets and that I had put the best in her book and the rest in the box that I had found the others with.  And they weren't faded at all.

I cried.  Big wracking sobs.  Erin was in the room and very concernedly asked if I was okay, but I really couldn't describe just why I was reacting like I was.  Brokenhearted joy is really the best way I can think of.

So I scanned that page, so I can have digital copies.  And then I printed one, traced it, and made stamps out of it for an art project.

Capture Your Grief 2015, Day 1 "Sunrise"

Every October (which is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month), CarlyMarie over at Project Heal does a "Capture Your Grief" photo challenge.  I can't say I will do them all.  But I will do the ones that speak to me.

Since the mornings are getting later, I am usually able to watch the sun rise as I take my older kids to school.  This morning, I okayed an update on my phone, which took a lot longer than I realized it would, so I didn't have my phone to get a picture until after I got home.  I wasn't feeling well, so I drove my Bigs the whole block to the school, watching the sunrise, listening to my four loud rainbows in the back of my minivan.  Many mornings I am irritable.  Mornings and I are not friends.  But this particular morning, watching the bright ornagey-pink sky get ever louder, listening to laughter, I was struck with a profound gratitude.  The gratitude that only comes after losing something precious.  I looked at my kids in my mirror, and I imagined one more.  There is one more seat belt back there, she would fit.  But there is an empty space, and the pain of that simultaneously takes my breath away and heightens the ecstatic joy of the four spaces filled with little, ever-growing bodies.  My life is blessed.

I took a picture once I got home.

PS, I find it funny that today is "intention" when I totally intended to post this yesterday.

Is this what acceptance really is?

I've discussed the stages of grief before, this isn't really what this post is about.

Anyway, I finished reading the book Allegiant by Veronica Roth last night (Spoilers if you haven't read it already!!)

I made a post on Facebook about how it didn't end the way I expected it to.  How I *expected* it to end was that Tris and Tobias would lose a lot of friends, but still end up being together.  Although part of me suspected that Tobias might die or have his memory accidentally wiped.

I didn't expect Tris to die.

And the read of the aftermath was very hard in the moment because his grief was so fresh and she was making his processing of his loss so real.

But I didn't hate the end.  I actually do think that the series ended decently.  Even hopefully.

But I had SO MANY of my friends comment on my post about how it was a terrible ending and that they hated it.  And many of these same friends haven't minded other deaths in other things.  So I had to stop about what made this particular death so much worse.

And I realized that it was the grief.  It's the grief, more than the death, that people are having such a visceral reaction to.  Why else would a series be able to continuously kill off main characters and still have people think it's great, but this one kills off one and it's terrible?

Don't get me wrong, I sobbed through all of the last chapters.  I've been there.  I've felt all that before; the numbness, the need to just forget everything, the clawing ache.  I, more than most of the people I know, feel like I have a right to hate that ending.

But I don't.  I'm actually glad to know that many of the things I feel are at least normal enough that an author can describe it and have it be the same range of emotions.  But since I have felt it, and am surviving it, I am not afraid of it.  I am comfortable in my grief.  Not that it doesn't hurt as badly sometimes as the day the doctor told me Cora had died, but more that I have accepted it as a normal, regular experience.  The same as being sad when a friend moves away, or disappointed when you don't get something you want badly, or being angry when someone says something mean.  I don't fear anger, or disappointment; I don't fear grief.

I have accepted it.


"Saying her name still gives me a little twinge of pain, a pinch that lets me know her memory is still dear to me." ~Tobias, "Allegiant"

It's been a long time.

I feel bad that I didn't post about her birthday.  I haven't posted much at all anywhere lately.  My life feels like it keeps getting away from me.

But we had a birthday celebration.  Cora's butterflies arrived and hatched early, so we released them on April 26th instead.

and then we played at the park for a bit.

Happily, we had also ordered baby ladybugs, and so had them to release on Cora's actual birthday

And had ladybug cupcakes

And Erin decided that Cora would like IHOP for dinner, and I think we decided to make it a tradition for her birthday.

When things whisper to me....

Shortly after Cora died, I felt like everything I saw around me symbolized her.  We were very very poor, and I could imagine myself up to my ears in pictures in figurines if I bought every one.  So I made a promise to myself, that I would buy things when, and only when, something really and truly whispered to me.  So, I have a few things.  It just so happens I find more things around Christmas, and maybe that's because it's such a sentimental time.  I had managed to get something for her every Christmas until last year.  I just didn't see anything that spoke to me.  And I accepted that.  If limiting myself from buying too many things is okay, I need to accept the opposite as well.

But when it was happening again this year, it did upset me.  I have an ornament for everyone in our family already.  I love walking through the Christmas stuff, and I love decorating, but it just made me so sad.  Maybe because we're yet another house further removed, and I'm just not feeling her here as much yet (we haven't gotten her shelf up yet, I only located the shelf last night).  I guess I needed that connection or something.

So I was just wandering at Target, when I saw this ornament.  A single, ceramic white feather.  It was almost electric, my fingers went tingly.  One of my original baby loss mother friends (I can't for the life of me remember who), mentioned that when she saw lone feathers floating around it made her think of her baby.  It felt like her telling me she was still there, and I really needed that.

Moving

Yep, we're moving.  Quite unexpectedly.  Matt got an amazing transfer offer, and it's the kind of thing that would be a great opportunity and we had no real reason to stay where we are.

So right now, I'm in the process of getting the house ready to sell.  Part of that is "de-personalizing."  Apparently it's better not to have your personal family pictures up on the walls, so the prospective buyers can picture themselves there, rather than just seeing you.

So tonight I'm packing Cora's shelf.  I hate putting it away.  The other pictures...well...I have the rest of my family HERE every day to look at, so that's not really a big deal.

But it's so sad to me.  Her whole life fits into one small box.

There's the added emotion of moving further away again.  It's not just time that separates us, it'll be another few hundred miles as well, and it's amazing how much that hurts.

Happy 7th birthday Cora

Seven years ago today I held a perfect redheaded angel in my arms. For just a few moments the grief slipped away as I was surrounded by and in awe of her. I didn't get to hold her in my arms for long, but separation will never change that she was, is and forever will be mine, because families are forever. 

I love you sweet Cora Rei. Thank you for all the gifts you have given me, and the person your presence has helped me become. I hope you are celebrating your beautiful day will all the other angels in heaven who love you. Thank you for the friendship of their mothers. You have more impact than I could ever have imagined.


We went out for her birthday dinner yesterday

And today we had her cupcakes.  Blackberry, because she told me to.  I passed by them in the store yesterday and a little voice in the back of my head said "Ooooh, put THOSE in the cupcakes!!"

It snowed yesterday and was still chilly today, so we didn't get to release the butterflies.  I'm really hoping some are still alive to release tomorrow.

I hate this day.

April 30th, the last day Cora was alive.  As much as I have come to terms with some things, it's still hard.  I STILL have the "if only I'd done this," and "I should have done that," thoughts that pop into my head, forever haunting me.

In the end, no matter what, she's not here.  She's not here.  And that hurts more than anything I could ever express.

I'm supposed to be planning a birthday party.  Instead I'll make cupcakes and release butterflies.  As much as I love that tradition, it's just not the same.

*sigh*

"Hopefully" (pregnancy mentioned)

So, I have become pregnant again.  It wasn't planned, but I'm excited...most of the time.  When I'm not terrified.

I have such a hard time talking about pregnancy with people.  I'll only be 6 weeks on Monday, but since I get so very sick, I don't even try to keep it a secret.  And of course, pregnancy means people want to talk about babies.

They don't understand what torture that is for me.

They don't understand that every plan of after birth is prefaced by a "Hopefully."

Hopefully, when the baby gets here....

I'll be nursing this baby. Hopefully. 

Erin's going to love helping with the baby. Hopefully. If all goes well.  If my baby doesn't die sometime between now and then.

Sometimes it accidentally slips out, and I get one of two reactions: That terrible pity that I hate, because it seems they think I've become some horrible, wounded, terrifying creature that is disfigured beyond recognition.  Or I get brushed off because I'm being morbid.  I'm worrying too much.  I'm "stuck" in my grief and I need therapy at best, medication at worst.

When those are extremes versions of what I really am.  I have been wounded, and sometimes the scars are visible.  But I'm still me.  I'm still breathing.  I'm still a beautiful being of worth.  I am not defined by my loss.  But I am also still grieving.  And grief is not a disease.  It is not something that one "gets over" in a specified amount of time.  It doesn't mean I am not capable of feeling joy.

I am just different than I was.  Cora's death was my chrysalis.  I'm not sure when it happened, but I have emerged into a beautiful butterfly.

Other women's babies

It's interesting how a picture can take you right back to the emotion of the moment it was taken in.  I was looking at old pictures a while back, trying to find pictures of me and my youngest sister (long story).  And I came across some pictures of me after Cora was born, but before I became pregnant with Erin, holding other people's babies.

I've shared this one before

It was taken 5 days after my best friend had her baby that she had been pregnant with me with.

Later came the blessing of that same sweet baby.

And then the baby of another friend I had been pregnant with, just another month later

The pictures totally took me back.  Back to how heartwrenching it was, how unfair it was, that I had given birth first but didn't have a baby of my own to hold.  To the anger that all the joy I had had at holding others' squishy babies was gone, replaced by sadness and grief.  I love those little girls, I truly do.  But at that point in time, I only saw not-Cora.

But at the same time, I'm surprised at my own bravery. It took a lot of courage.  I didn't think it was all that impressive at the time, but looking back on it...I'm rather proud of myself.

Caterpillars!!

Cora's caterpillars arrived.  Hopefully we have warm weather this year so we can release the butterflies and have them be warm enough to fly away.

That woman

This picture was taken April 2, 2006, 7 years ago tomorrow.

This was a woman who, though still very much struggling with hyperemesis, was happily expecting a baby.  And not just "expecting" in the pregnancy euphemism sense, but literally expecting a baby.  There had been a lot of loss in my family, but I had made it not only out of the first trimester with a living baby, but I was so close to the end.  I was 34 weeks pregnant in this picture and a baby's chances of survival at birth at 34 weeks are nearly as likely as a full term birth.  Not only that, but she was perfectly healthy.  The ultrasounds and tests all came back perfectly.  I was going to have a baby, it was only a matter of time.  I loved looking at baby clothes and had everything planned out at least a year in advance.  And I was so ready to just not be where I was anymore (sick), and just get on with the whole mom thing.

That woman is gone now.  She died when Dr. B said the words "There's her heart, and it's not beating."

This is me today.

A lot more has changed than my hair color.  So much more than you can ever see.  I have 3 healthy children now, and I love (mostly) every moment. (because there are just some mom moments that you don't love, period.)  I'm a woman who doesn't expect tomorrow.  I love having my kids wake me up because that doesn't mean I have to spend even a moment worrying that they died sometime in the night. (It's not a serious worry, but it's there).  And while I do make plans for their futures, there is that little voice in my head that adds "hopefully" to every one.

I'm a woman who is missing a very tangible part of herself, but it's an invisible wound.  Unlike someone who has lost an arm or a leg, you can't tell by looking at me.  But that doesn't make it any less real.  I see holes in every family picture, at every family outing.  It may be invisible to everyone else, but it is very visible and tangible to me.

But I am now also a woman who lives in the moment.  I can sit and just watch my children play for hours, soaking it in.  I am a woman who will hold my children when they are fussy and just be glad that they are here to fuss at me (not that it isn't REALLY HARD to be fussed at, and not at all enjoyable), because I can look up at the picture of the one for whom I'd give ANYTHING to have a 40 minute argument over popcorn with.

Her name means "heart full of gratitude," and she gave that to me.  The ability to see and appreciate and be grateful for what a moment means.  Even the hard ones.

Easter

I find it rather glorious to be Christian at Easter.  What more could a grieving mother wish for (besides her baby of course) than the promise that death is not the end, and is temporary?  "For as in Adam all die, even so, in Christ, shall all be made alive." (1 Cor. 15:22)