I should be lugging your carseat in and out of the van, over your brother's seats and snack wrappers and random socks and the umbrella wedged by the door.

I should have had to change the batteries by now in your swing, the one that swayed your brothers into slumber.

I should be behind on laundry, your pink things a shocking contrast to all the blue and brown and comoflauge clothes in the pile, because we are up all night and all day and you and I are sleep deprived.

I should be almost recovered, my scar a little thicker, another ring in a tree that tells another year's story.

I should be over the PUPS rash, and losing weight, and packing up the tiny premie clothes and exchanging them for the 0-3 months.

I should be tired of the vigilance in keeping you safely out of reach from the kisses from well meaning brothers, who would wrestle their way to you, inevitably bumping you out of the sleep you resisted.

I should be wearing you in the Mobi, wrapped tight against me, keeping your heart's beat in rythm with mine. God, what I would do to have you there, on my chest, with a heartbeat.

I shouldn't be a wreck at every baby picture on facebook. I shouldn't ache for days after holding another baby. I shouldn't think about how I will search every other new sibling for traces of you.

I am weary of this grief. How did you leave such a hole when we never even held you?

On Your Birthday

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.

Hope

I am terrified of trying again. That familair copper tastes fills my mouth at the thought of having a sonogram. The monthly doppler search for a heart beat makes me reach for a bowl.

The giant has me cornered, and I am cowered in his presence.

My final thoughts the moments before they took Grace from me, or perhaps I dreamed, was of seeing her run down the hall with her brothers, their bare feet slapping the wood floor in unison like a tribal chant; my voice calling their names, Solo, Eli, Jonas, Gracie Beth; a name so foreign, but so perfect.

Then I dreamed another dream of a recovery room filled with all my family, and my husband's family, and my sweet friend's there to share the joy after the pain, there waiting for me, and Caleb, and baby number 5. I watched the Doctor that had wept with us and prayed with us and for us to find joy again, lift a baby from my belly and raise her high above the sheet. She was weeping and I was weeping and my husband was weeping. Right there, in that second, the sorrowful tears shifted to joyful ones. I can feel the shift now.

Take that, Giant. I still have hope.

You should be arriving any day.I force myself to stop pretending that you still are. Dreaming for even a minute of your weight in my arms, your mouth rooting towards my breast, your long fingers curled tight, turns to nightmare.

When I was little my dad taught me how to control my dreams. I was just a girl and could turn chase on villans, create weapons out of air, change the story I was writing in my sleep, but I can not bring her back, not even in my dreams; like Anne Shirley and her red hair that could not be imagined away.

 There's a dull ache resonating where Gracie should be. Tears still rest close to the surface and overflow at silly things, like watching my teenage nieces braiding each others hair.

Im not angry that Grace died. Not exactly. I trust in Jesus.  I believe that the Almighty God that knew the beginning and the end before the foundations of the earth were laid, has a plan. Im not angry at his plan. Not completely.

Im not angry that my friend's daughter is healthy and due next week. Im sad. I am heart crushingly sad. But I am not angry.

Everyone says its okay to be angry. But I refuse. I throw my anger on the giant's face and fight hard not to fix my eyes on him. I know that if I stop worshipping, I stop trusting. If I stop trusting, I start to panic. The all out crazy lady kind of panic because my baby is gone and in a box, in a field, and everything in me wants to rush there and scream into the night. I know that if I do that, I will not recover. I know I will not rise up and walk away. I know the anger will take root and ruin me.

I dont have time for poison. I have her brothers to raise. I have a Savior to point them too. I have a giant to fight back every moment of everday. I can't do that if I'm angry. I cant do that if I stop trusting. I can not do that if I stop worshipping.

I am weary of the sadness. So I worship.
I want her back. So I worship.

And He is near.
And I weep, and weep, and weep.

I dont know why its pulling me under tonight.

I don't know why the terrible loop that started with, "we cant find her heartbeat," is on repeat.

I don't know what today did to trigger the shadows to step away from the edges of normalcy and smother me.

I don't know why it feels fresh again.

I don't know why I am back to being unable to catch my breath. Is it knowing she is gone or or the panic that I have all of forever to ache for her?

I don't know why I am nesting when I know she isn't arriving. 

I don't know how to listen to her brother plead for another sister every night. 

I don't know how to be both relieved and sad every 28 days. 

I don't know how to grow our family without sheer terror of every sonogram.  

I don't know how to close my eyes and rest. 

I don't know how to make it stop.

Sometimes I cant put my finger on why on a perfectly fine day, something still feels wrong.

Then I remember I lost you, and the sadness stops ebbing in the shadows and throws its weight, heavy on my chest.