You feel a little further away every time I leave your grave. Each step carries me away from the last hours I held you.

I startle half a dozen times a day thinking you are moving, and for a split second it all feels unreal, like my life could be rewound, and a thousand trips to your tree erased and with them the ordeal of burying you. For a whole second, I have hope.

Then the second passes. And I remember that I could not have felt you move. That I have not felt you flip and squirm and move to Ben Folds or your brother's raucous for 65 whole days. I remember that your due date is not approaching. I remember that you are wrapped in a quilt and resting in a box that is buried under a muskagee myrtle in the field.

And then I force my eyes around this giant, and remember you are whole and perfect in heaven. I remember that this is just one more moment that I can praise Him in the storm. One more moment I can show my sons my tears and grief and let them hear me say, "He is still good."

Knocking the wind out of me

It's like being hit in the chest with a ton of bricks, his questions.

They're always asked at inopportune times and when surrounded by strangers. I've become accustomed to weeping in grocery store aisles.

 "Mom, are we going to have another baby? Will it be a girl? Please can it be a girl? I really want a sister."

"Will she wear Gracie's clothes? They're already here and ready and never been worn."

"Will we paint her room pink? What will her name be?"

"Will you stop being sad if you have another baby girl, Mom?

 Are you more sad at Gracie's grave? Sometimes I am, but sometimes it feels good to be near her."

One brother wants to go to heaven and bring her back, and the other says dying won't be so bad anymore because then he can be with her.

And then you have their prayers.
"Dear God thank you for our Gracie girl. Take care of her until I get there". He sits under her tree with a hand on her grave telling me it's the only way he can touch her.

We talk a lot about dying, about Heaven. We talk about Jesus, how he loved us enough to die. About how He rose from the dead. About how Gracie will not be brought back from the dead, but yes, God is powerful enough that He could. We talk a lot about how God is good, even though Mommy cries a lot.

We talk a lot about how David was just a boy who stood firmly in front of Goliath and didn't buckle because his eyes weren't fixed on the giant. They were fixed on the Savior.  We talk about how right now, our giant is missing Gracie, and how we will not fix our eyes on that loss, but on the Savior that stands behind it. Even though some days that giant is so tall, it feels impossible to see around him.

Dreams

Your biggest brother asks me every morning about my dreams. He would have and still does, love you fiercely. At first I was hesitant to share my dreams with him, but I think sometimes he dreams of you too.
On bad nights I dream of a dozen graves surrounding yours, siblings that suddenly grew still.  On good nights I dream you are still moving inside me, dancing like your brothers did to certain songs and voices. I dream of you every night.
He tells me his dreams, and sandwiched between Sasquatch destroying his swing set and aliens landing in the field, he dreams of you being here, snuggled in our laps, dressed in the clothes he so gingerly chose for you. He dreams of you watching him play football, and growing to play soccer, and roasting marshmallows at the fire pit in the woods.
You fill a million dreams and I am so thankful that we can be with you there.

One Day

I thought it would get easier after the perintologist arranged the D&E. I thought it would be easier when the procedure was done and I couldnt feel her still weight inside of me. I thought it would be easier after the doctor famed on abortiondoc.com, tore her from her from me because like her brothers, she couldn't be born naturally.

I thought it would be easier after the funeral home director sat across from me at my kitchen table filling out her death certificate. I thought it would get easier after we wrapped her in the quilt her Nana and I made and placed her in the most beautifully crafted box, made by a friend that poured out his love for us through wood and nails.

I thought it would be easier after her dad and brothers dug a hole and lowered her down. I thought it would be easier after she was covered in grass under the lavender crepe myrtle planted just for her. I thought that easier was coming after the family walked away from her grave and her dad and I clung to each other and wept.

Easier must be around the corner. I know that one day I will not cry when a newborn joins our pew in church or I pass the girl section in Target. I know that one day I will not tear up when all the cousins are together knowing that she will never join their play, or ride the wagon to the pumpkin patch, or sit in the conversation pit to open christmas presents, or ride horses in the pasture with papa. One day I will stop waking up thinking she is still growing inside of me.

I know that it will get easier because I know I will see you again. I know you are whole. I know you are loved. I know you are in heaven. I know that my God is still good. 

Baby Price

My dear friend is having her baby soon. A daughter. A month before Grace was due. We declared them bff's after the sonogram told me that mine was in fact, not another boy.

 I want to stand in the field and scream at the heavens until I am hoarse.  For just a moment I'd like You to be silent and distant, and let me be angry. Why is her baby girl healthy and alive? Why is mine dead and buried, and her brothers asking a dozen questions a day about why she can't be here when we have already bought her clothes.

 My friend carried my grief so earnestly that we could feel the weight of it alleviate at her prayers. She was broken hearted and wept a river for us. She brought us a meal and flowers and stood with us at Gracie's grave.

 In a month I will rejoice with her. I will hold her sweet girl and break all over again. I will bring her a meal and flowers and stand with her at a nursery window gazing at her perfect girl. I will carry her joy as closely to my heart as she carried my grief.

 And I will learn how to spend the rest of my life not comparing how old Gracie should be everytime we see this sweet baby at play dates, parades and Christmas Eve brunch.

Wild onions grow at your grave. I showed your brothers how to pull them, but only Jonas will put it to his lips. I have a million memories of wild onions and treks to the river and fireflies and the way grass stays warm on your feet long after the sun goes down. I am so glad that heaven is better than earth. I hope the wild onions are tall in the grass. I hope you can catch fireflies at dusk. I hope you feel how much we love you.

Doctor's Office

Hell is waiting in a room where pregnant women's hands flutter over their extended bellies. They have no idea that their baby could stop moving. Stop breathing. Stop living. I stretch my arms in a hug around my waist, the empty space where she should be feeling bigger than it was at home.  

Grief

It's the smallest of things that will undo me, like bumping my hand into the door frame as I pass through. Then the damn breaks and the tears rush to the surface, and it is as if I am sitting again in front of the monitor, seeing you too still, the dark lines of your arms and legs unmoving like your heart.

Tests

Im dreading our appointment at the perintologist. I do not want to know why you died. I do not want to sit across the desk from Spencer, the gentosist pedldling his gentetic screening goods like a used car salesman, his twitchy eyes hopeful to move some make and model from his lot of tests. I want to refuse his needles to probe my blood for other imperfections. I want to put my fingers in my ears and hum so I can not hear them talk about the next baby, because all I want right now is you, growing inside of me, listening to the shouts I throw at your brothees to stop wrestling, stop screaming, stop being noisy boys.

The amount of effort it takes to not think about her is exhausting. 

To not lose myself in recalling every detail is excruciating.

Loving her brothers and dad get me out of bed every morning.

Pretending she was never real, keeps me from returning to it.

I want you back baby girl. The empty space in me is too big, too empty. I am surviving each hour because you are whole in Heaven.

There are waves of grief so deep I almost start to sink. You are loved, Gracie. You are wanted. You are so deeply missed.

6 weeks

My baby girl is gone. Nestled in a box under dirt and rock. Planted under a myrtle that will bloom lavender petals.

Her body is in pieces, but I picture her whole; else I lose myself in fits of tears and rage, desperate to claw the earth till a space is carved out next to her.

All I have is the memory of her moving and dreams of her feet

matching the rythm of her brother's steps 

down hallways and stairs and wooded paths to the ravine, 

and christmas card photos with her sandwiched between brothers on the fireplace hearth,

and a pink bike racing down the driveway, 

and dark hair and light eyes and a sweetness like one brother and a sassy mouth like another, 

and shin guards and lessons about Mia,

and nail polish and earings and tights and dates with her daddy,

and skinned knees bandaged with wonder woman band-aids, 

and shopping trips, 

and a potty buddy on camping trips,

and a friendship like I have with her nana, 

and her- just her in my arms that ache for her so badly that sometimes I can not breathe.

Fearfully Made

I wonder what you look like. So desperate to see your face, I study your sonogram photo and blurr my eyes when i look at your brothers and try to imagine you.

And it hurts because I never can. Its like chasing a shadow.

One man saw you. He delivered you from me even though neither of us wanted deliverence. My bones burn bitterly that he saw your face and your hands and your feet, and he passed you nonchalantly to another.

But I know you have been seen by Him. And held by Him. And loved by Him. And better still, you see Him. And no greater love could I want for you to be held in, then His.

But my arms will ache until I find you in Heaven.