Those April showers have spilled over into May, and it’s been raining here for about a week now. More rain in the forecast as well. Often I think of the day our Isabella was born, it was a gray day, overcast, I don’t really recall if it even rained or not, but the weather was gloomy.
I’ve been able to tell Isabella’s story in different capacities; for Hospice, for Christus Trinity Mother Francis, recently for a friend in nursing school focusing on my experience with the postpartum nurses. I realize this is all my choice, and I grow through each interaction. It is not always without fear or anxiety or alot of reflecting and remembering and tears.
I try to reflect on the wonderful times, the sweet memories of having her safe in my belly. The pleasure I took in my pregnancy, feeling her roll and kick, naming her, singing to her, rocking her in the chair that rocked my two other babies. I’m still happy she was ours, that she was here. She has taught me what loving and loosing looks like. Unconditional love.
While breaking wide open is not was never something I wanted to experience, it has allowed in so much light. Losing a child has always been my worst nightmare. It’s the reason I didn’t want to have children in my 20’s : because I will love so much and so BIG and so STRONG, and all the “what if’s”. What if something happens to my child?
And something did happen. And then she was gone. Grief: the presence of absence.
The last year I’ve seen so much, felt so much, experienced so much within myself. But it doesn’t happen without hard work and I certainly haven’t arrived. I want to keep going. Doing the hard stuff. Share. Listen. Change. Grow.
I’ve felt the peace of God. I’ve experienced BIG Love and felt God’s presence in simple ways: rocks and breeze and butterflies and my child patting my back.
As I move more into myself, accepting who I am, who Isabella showed me I already was: a wonderful mother, a healer, a helper, a friend- I know she was here for a reason. Not to teach me a lesson. Not putting a bow on her life/ death/ loss! Not that her death was God’s perfect will. BUT, her life served a purpose. Her three hours in my arms gave me something I didn’t have before.
I’m so grateful to be where I am on this journey. To look back, to give, to move forward, stepping into something bigger than I could imagine or even dream. Isabella Joy is a part of my life, of my story, and always will be. I don’t want to define myself with the despair and heaviness of grief, I felt in those first few months – BUT, I don’t want to forget, or gloss over the importance of her short, sweet life.