Incoherently Yours

Sometimes I just want to throw my hands in the air and scream, "I CAN'T. I cannot do this."  But it seems I can, and so I do. All the while wishing I didn't have to.

She would have been two months old on the 26th. I would have been posting pictures on Facebook, showing the world how much she’s grown and how quickly she was catching up. She should have had the chance to grow up. We should be breastfeeding rockstars, getting our routine down and settling in at home. She should be keeping us up at night and cuddling on our chests. She would have loved her bassinet, her blankets, and her stuffed animals. She would have looked so cute in her cloth diapers. She should be the reason her Daddy can’t leave the house. She would be the reason he comes home early. She should be the sun my world revolves around. She should be here. Should. Would. The words that color my world.

Rory chose to fight for her life. Victory was not guaranteed and no, it wasn’t achieved. But she fought. She wanted to live. So how can I choose not to? I’m not talking about suicide, for all you nervous nellies out there. I’m talking about living my life waiting to die. That’s not what Rory did. Time and again Sheldon said Rory was just like her mom. I guess it’s my turn to be just like my daughter. I’ll fight to live. I will wrestle every good thing out of life and truly live it. Because that’s what she would’ve done. And at the end, when it’s all over, I’ll look back on a life well spent. A life not wasted. And I’ll smile and sigh and get my “well done, good and faithful servant” and scoop Rory into my arms and smother her with kisses and we’ll reunite with family already there and wait for the rest. I will be living my life waiting for eternity. I will be homesick. I will miss her. But the point is; I will live my life. Because she tried so hard to live hers.

October 17 Confessions of a Grieving Mama • I don’t know what to do without her. The past three years of my life have been all about her. Trying to conceive, getting pregnant, trying to stay pregnant, early labor, early delivery – all these things were all about her. Rory. My Rory. She was my life before she was even born. • There are still days when I simply don’t care that I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to care about it. I don’t want to look ahead to tomorrow, to next week, to next year, when I can barely make it through the minutes of today. • I am okay with how I am grieving. I am a person of intense emotions. Feeling things in extreme measures is not new for me. I need to feel. I don’t want to be drugged to make the emotions more manageable, the days more bearable. Yes, many times life is unbearable. But that’s the way it should be. That is the correct response. Rory is gone. For now, I need to be allowed to feel despair whenever I...

October 4th I’ve forgotten how to pray. I feel like God hates me. I know He loves me. Maybe one day what I feel and what I know will once again line up. In some ways I feel this would be easier if I wasn’t a Christian. If I could just blame some callous deity I didn’t really believe in and direct all my pain and hurt in that direction. But the God I am angry with is my God. Though He slay me, yet will I serve Him. I can’t speak to Him at the moment, but I feel Him. He is my comfort and strength. But He is also the source of my pain. God let my baby die. I don’t know how to process that. I know the Sunday school answers. I know the platitudes. Sin is the reason bad things happen. We live in a broken world. God weeps with me. It’s all crap. Rory is gone. I can’t reason that away. My feelings refuse to align with what I know to be true. And I’ve decided that for now, that’s perfectly alright. God has big shoulders. He can handle my deep, indescribable sadness and...

Friday, September 9 It felt like we were getting our miracle. At rounds today the doctors told us Rory was stable enough to be moved to the UofA and she would probably have surgery within 24 hours of arriving. My stomach churned. “Do you think they’ll let me ride with her in the ambulance?” I ask Sheldon “Hopefully.” He says and wraps an arm around my shoulders. We were having breakfast in the cafeteria of the hospital. We had called our parents to let them know the good news. The transport team had been arranged for. Rory would be on her way sometime today. Or at least that’s what we thought. Nothing could have prepared us for the news we received when we walked unsuspectingly back into Rory’s room. A doctor we had never seen before was standing over Rory. He walks over to us and introduces himself as a surgeon from the UofA. And then proceeds to tell us he will not be doing the surgery and Rory isn’t going anywhere. Because the small bleed in her brain turned out to be not so small. ...

Friday and Saturday: September 2 – September 3 Everything happened so suddenly. One minute it seemed as though Rory would be breaking records for getting out of the NICU early and the next we were forced to face the possibility of losing her. Sheldon and I had gone home Thursday night after Sheldon had held Rory for the first time. I wanted to get my nails done quick Friday morning and get back to her. It sounds so trite now, but I wanted my nails nice and short because I was handling her more. Changing her diaper, wiping her face, and giving sponge baths. Friday morning at 7:30am I got a phone call. Rory wasn’t acting like herself. She was irritable and seemed to have a tummy ache. With a sigh I relayed the message to Sheldon, saying it looked like Rory was going to have “one of those preemie bad days” and I probably wouldn’t be able to hold her that day. I went to my appointment and called the nurses a couple of times to see how she was doing. They told me they were taking her off ...