Its been four months. Today is your due date. One brother arrived on his expected day, the others were early. I like to think you would be here by now. To save my sanity I limited the time that I allowed myself to ponder that you most likely would have been here around Christmas. Just like when carrying your brothers, my blood pressure would have spiked and the fetal moniters would have tied me to a hospital bed, and you would have been cut from my belly early, but precisely when He intended.
But you won't fill my arms today, and the chasm in my middle feels grander. So I occupy my hands with soil and seeds, forget-me-nots from your Aunt who eased my grief with a million texts and calls to make sure I was still breathing, and getting out of bed, and missing you but not getting lost.
Your brothers will decorate pretty pots for the seeds to grow in, and pray a dozen prayers today, as they do most days. They fall from their lips at every meal, before bedtimes and in the trips to your tree. They are perplexed at why God won't being you back, angry because they want you so much and passionately miss you, even though they never felt you kick. Yet, no matter how much we love you, we can't wish you back from Heaven, and honestly, I wouldn't want you to trade the Splender your eyes first saw for this fallen earth.
But Gracie girl, I am desperate for you; fall out on the floor and sob until my body is weak and my throat hoarse, desperate. I can not yet fathom a day when that desperation will ease or if I even want it to. At least today, on the day that stops the endless anticipation of waiting for you not to arrive, I am still breathing, and getting out of bed, and missing you, but I am not lost.
