Fading

She is fading from me. I think this is normal and healthy, though I don’t want it to happen. The truth is I don’t feel like a mom. I know that I am one, but I feel less and less like a mother every day. I have difficulty remembering her. I am only able to do so when I read the words I carefully recorded here and in my journal. Only then am I overwhelmed by the powerful emotions that remind me of my brief and tragic experience with motherhood.

We are looking for a new house. This one is haunted. It is haunted with nightmares, fear, devastating disappointment. These walls are silent witnesses to our sorrow, our desperate, ineffective prayers. They have absorbed each sob wretched from our souls. If I am quiet enough with my memories, I hear the sound of our weeping echoing through the rooms. I’m not quite sure what to do with her room, with her things. I’ve just left everything the way it was.

We had our first visit to the psychologist last week. It was good. Nothing earth-shattering, but I didn’t expect earth-shattering. It’s a place to start. We talked a little of making peace with what has happened so we can move forward. I think I’ve made my peace. I am living with it. Mike is having trouble with the “living with it” part. When I talk with him and ride the merry-go-round-and-round-and-round of questions, I realize just what we have lost inside of ourselves through this: faith, trust, hope, security. I worry that Mike will never come back. He borders on agnostic and I understand. I have the same thoughts; I’ve just come to a different conclusion.

When I look back, I feel foolish. I feel foolish for hoping, for “acting in faith”. I should have just accepted it like everyone else who’s had to walk this wretched mile. My heart is sick. A friend told me something she heard about parenthood: “To have a child is to have your heart walking around outside your body.” In my case to have a child is to have my heart buried six feet under the ground. Sometimes I wish I really was dead. Sometimes I imagine being in a terrible accident and dying. I think of how wonderful that would be, except Mike and I would have to be together. I can’t leave him because I’m the only good thing he has that is keeping him going. I know this because he told me. We will be flying together on a trip in September. I am secretly hoping we will be in a plane crash and not survive. I understand this is morbid. I’m not suicidal. I imagine anyone who has held death in their arms has thoughts like this.  I also understand why people go insane. Not mental illness, but slipping through the elusive window of insanity. Ah, how sweet that would be. The simplicity and freedom would be such a relief.

I’ve made my peace, though, and I am happy simply functioning in my little corner. I thrive on the average mundane, the busyness of my work that takes me away each day. I spend my days in a room full of nine bright little minds that can’t get enough of learning about the world around them. It is my connection to reality. Thanks to these little ones, I won’t be finding that window anytime soon.

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