work in progress

I make an attempt to weave the two together; the time in between and the now.  A need to make them make sense together, somehow, to learn to live in both at once.  My daughter in Chronos.  My son in Kairos.  I hold his pictures and trace his face and at the same time I feel my daughter stretching her life against my breast.  The two seem so very far apart and I wonder how it is ever possible to bring them together, my two children, without having to exclude one or the other.

One so undeniably alive and present.  The other so undeniably dead and missing.

I haven't figured this all out; how to be a good parent to my living child while simultaneously attempting to keep the memory of my dead one from also dying.  Sometimes the thought crosses my mind that I should do just that; let his memory die and go into the same oblivion that he did.  It would be easier to forget and to let the spinning of the world propel me with its forward momentum.  I look at my daughter and often feel the compulsion to clip her brother's name from my tongue when it hangs there, waiting to be said.  As if still longing for him somehow detracts from the love I have for her.  Can I really give all my love to this child wiggling in my lap while sometimes still wanting to live in that in between time when her brother was still alive.  Twenty-four minutes almost 18 months in my past.

There are still many times when I am in the shower when I cry out for him.  I beg and plead to have him back.  For just a day.  For just an hour.  To get to know him in the same way I know his sister.  Not as the sick and dying baby in the sterile operating room or as the cold and still one in the recovery room but as the pink and living baby I hold in my arms now.  A glimpse of what he could have been had things only turned out differently.  I cry out that I want to feed him, to bathe him, to feel him against my skin.

But I keep my cries to myself, mostly.  I fear judgment.  I've always feared judgment from people who maybe think I am hanging on too much or that I need to let go of the past.  I fear people thinking that I am incapable of mothering this living child because I can't tear myself away from the dead one.  I fear people thinking to themselves, "Isn't she over this by now? He wasn't even a real baby yet."  I fear people making a judgment that I must be depressed simply because I still miss my son when in actuality I am very grateful for the life I have with my husband and daughter.  As I said in my last post, they are my light and I know how very fortunate I am to have them lighting up my world.

The fear of judgment isn't totally unfounded as I have come to learn.  I hear the judgment in subtle tones from people we know.  It is often so subtle I don't think those from which it comes even would realize it themselves.

"Now that Clio is here you can move on from the pain of losing George."

I also hear it in the silence.  His name is hardly ever uttered.  I cannot recall the last time someone, other than baby loss parents, asked us how we were dealing with our grief over George since Clio arrived.  Her arrival and his absence are intwined for us in ways that other people just rarely acknowledge.

I fear even writing all this here for the possible judgment that some may have.
She has a living child now, why is she still writing about this?  She should be grateful for her daughter.

I don't want George's death to overshadow the life of his sister.  She is celebrated every moment I am breathing.  I love her completely and I recognize how fortunate I am to have her .  I take not a single cry or fussy moment for granted.  But I also don't want her life to negate the importance of her brother's.  How to keep that from happening I am not sure.  I guess it is just a work in progress.