Life After Loss

I don't know where that came from.  Babycakes. It's so random. Your dad laughed the first time he heard me call you that. You were still in the NICU. But guess what? He was calling you babycakes by the time we brought you home. Your room looks just like how it did when we first brought you home. I would do anything to have you here with us again. Or to have traded places with you. We had hope. We prayed. We begged for you to be okay. We held on so tightly to all the good things the doctors would tell us. We knew you were going to wake up, how could we ever survive if you didn't? Yet, it's been over 9 months and we are surviving. Some days it's just barely, but we are.  How is it that you've been gone for as long as you were here? In some ways it seems like you took your last breath just yesterday, in other ways it feels like a different lifetime. I remember everything about your hospital room. I remember the beeping. The little ray of ...

Every time I hear about another child gaining their angel wings, my heart stops.  I imagine these small, innocent, beautiful human beings who never even got a chance to fully experience life. I think of how their parent's lives are forever changed. I think about how the parents will be in a complete fog for the next days, weeks, or even months to come. How you can't wrap your head around the fact that your child is no longer here on Earth with you. Even if you knew your child was battling such a big fight, it does seem like they will ever leave you. How can a child's life be taken from you? Everything must get better. I think about how I was torn at Arianna's wake. I remember crying very minimally. I remember looking at my husband and smiling. It felt like we were being torn. It took everything we had to even be there, standing. But at the same time, we got to remember Arianna's legacy and celebrate her life. We felt the support from so many people and we...