3rd Anniversary

It's hard to imagine that three years ago today we lost our first son, Owen. The weather we're having outside matches my mood, too. It's off and on sunny, rainy and stormy. We just had a huge thunder boomer and concurrent downpour. It lasted all of five minutes. Now the sun is trying to peep out again. Three years ago when we emerged from the hospital, all I could think about was how something so horrific could happen on such a beautiful day. What right did the flowers have to bloom or the trees to sprout leaves. How could it be such a gloriously warm, bright and sunny day? At the time, I was stunned, numb and exhausted. We had just held our son in our arms as he died, never having heard his little voice. A fleeting thought crossed my overwhelmingly sad mind, "was God mocking me?" I felt like I was looking at the world from the outside in. I watched myself walk with my family up to our meager little room in the hospital apartments on Beacon Hill to gather our things.

For 40 days hubby and I had to sleep in separate beds because there were no rooms available with anything else. So we pushed the twins together so we could at least hold hands at night. We would fall into our beds around 11pm or so after we had visited NICU and get up again around 7am again to be back in NICU for the next shift change. We were there in the morning, then left for a while, had lunch, were back around 1 or 2pm, stayed for a while, read to Owen, then left for a while, had dinner out somewhere - maybe wandered around Boston for a while, then came back to NICU to check on things, kiss O and say good night. Of course, I was pumping then. So I had to schedule getting up to pump milk and store it, all with the hopes that we would be bringing it along with Owen back home. In the end, the milk got donated to a milk bank and our ride home was as empty as the baby's car seat in the back. My poor father had to sit next to it for 2+ hrs on the ride back to Maine.

Maybe it's not anxiety that tightens my chest at night - it's quite possible and very likely it's still grief. Why in the last two anniversary's I haven't felt like this, I don't know. It's not supposed to happen this way. We never had the happy ending you see on TV. There was no miracle cure, no instant anti-biotic that stopped his infection. He just died. And I think I turned myself off after that for a long time.

My wish and prayer for all of you is that you never experience that kind of tragedy in your lifetimes. Hold your children close and thank God you have them and they are safe and happy in your arms. I know I always try to sneak in extra hugs and kisses to LD whenever I can.