Eight Years

Brené Brown notes in Rising Strong (p. 5), "During the process of rising, we sometimes find ourselves homesick for a place that no longer exists. We want to go back to that moment before we walked into the arena, but there's nowhere to go back to."

That moment came for me eight years ago. Sometimes, I long for the innocence of before and ache for a different ending–one where three healthy children fill our home with noise and laughter, not two. Everyone has scars; no one who has lived, lives their life unscathed.

Because of Isabella’s short life–and her death–I look at life differently. It was incredibly painful not to be able to drop her off at kindergarten. In contrast, dropping our son off for his first day was strangely easy. Other parents stood at the edge of the playground in tears. We waved to him, stuck around for a few minutes (mostly out of social pressure), then left–no tears, no "How is he already in kindergarten?!" or "I'm not ready for my baby to be in elementary school!" 

We were grateful to experience this milestone with our son–thankful that a classroom had a cubby with his name on it, a teacher expecting him, new friends to meet. Not the unseen absence of a child. I don't know yet what it will feel like when we drop off our youngest in the future.

Even now, I cannot hear about a pregnancy without an internal flicker of fear. Partway through the school year, we learned that my son's kindergarten teacher is pregnant. I'm excited for her–and silently terrified that something will happen to her child. Baby showers are still hard, even eight years later. I can remember a time when a baby shower only elicited excitement or questions about what to purchase, not anxiety that the gifts might be packed away, unused. 

These emotions may fade with time or never go away; it's only been eight years.

Because of Isabella–and my mom–cemeteries are not places of fear. They are quiet, peaceful places we sometimes visit on trips, full of unexpected beauty and visible signs of remembrance. In the first several years after Isabella, I frequently visited the cemetery, switching out the flowers on her grave and my mother's grave to correspond with the changing seasons, and meeting some of the other visitors. Our lives are busier now with two young children at home, and I am rarely near the cemetery. The last time I went, I noticed her flowers had blown away in a strong wind. Although I purchased more, I have not been back yet to replace them. Several years ago, leaving the vase empty would have felt like a betrayal. My love for her is etched so deeply into my soul that I could move to the other side of the world, never visit her grave again, and she would still be just as treasured.  

Not a day has gone by that I haven’t thought of her–not just once, but many times. The day may come when I don’t think of her daily, but not yet.