A reflection on Mother's day…

I have been sitting on this post since Mother's day… I have been struggling with finding the words to actually describe what Mother's day is like after losing a child.  Here is what I can say a few weeks after the fact… Mother's day is just a day.  For me, and I am thinking I am not alone in this, it means nothing.  There is nothing "Happy" about it.  It serves as a day to remind me of what I don't have.  It is a day that I am acutely in tune to the fact that there are only two little voices wishing me Happy Mother's day and only two little faces giving me kisses.  Only two… there should be three.   If someone would have told me how tremendously painful being a mother was going to be, I would have never believed them.  I could not have imagined, as I watched my beautiful children enter this world filling me with joy, that their very presence would make me vulnerable… I would not have guessed that their pain could bring me to my knees in a heartbeat… I did not realize their very existence could ever make me second guess mine.  I wasn't prepared for that side of motherhood; to have your heart at their mercy. I have learned that when you lose a child, motherhood doesn't stop, but it looks and feels a whole lot different than it did.  There are moments when I experience true happiness and there are moments when I want to put a hole through a wall.  There are times when I can't picture what Dex looked like unless I look at a photo and yet there are times when I can still smell him.  I am moving forward… I am figuring out this new world of mine, but it's a day by day battle to choose happiness and to choice joy.  I don't always win that fight… but I am doing my best.  

Yes, I am blessed to have Noah and Courty.  God knows how they saved me from myself and my pain. .. the two of them bring me more joy than I could have imagined ever feeling again and in the same breath they remind me of everything I am missing with Declan.  On Mother's day, I was watching Courty run into the lake, holding her dress up, shrieking with delight and I thought to myself, 'I could not live without her.' The next moment, Noah ran by me, with Murray hot on his heels and I thought, 'Life wouldn't be worth living without him.'  It's those moments, the ones that used to bring me instant joy, that make me hurt the most now.  It's the ordinary life we are living that makes my pain and longing so much more real.