Time

Yesterday, after I commented on some pictures a friend posted of herself on Facebook when she was pregnant with her son, we got talking about being pregnant. I was 30 weeks behind her, but for a while we were pregnant at the same time. She asked me if Thomas was a "kicky pants", if he ever got the hiccups, and if he poked me all the time like her cheeky little monkey (who is now a great big almost five-year old!) did.

We traded stories, back and forth.

Yes, Thomas got the hiccups a few times later on in my pregnancy. I remember the gentle, rhythmic movements and feeling so terrible that I couldn't do a thing to stop them except talk soothingly to my lumpy belly while I rubbed it.

No, Thomas wasn't a kicky pants. He was an acrobat - moving in and out of breech position long after he should have had room to do so - but a relatively gentle one. He used to poke me regularly in one spot, just under my left rib cage, and he used to tap dance on my bladder every once in a while. But mostly, he was calm and gentle.

As we chatted, my friend and I, it got me thinking about how nice it was to talk about Thomas without talking about Thomas dying.

We all know how the story ends, so it was really nice to focus on the middle bit for a while instead. Reliving those perfect, blissful moments when he was alive and thriving. And I was undamaged and happy.

It made me miss him like crazy, but it also made him feel so very, very real again.

While it's busy bringing healing, time also has a cruel way of stealing the reality of a lost child. It dulls the only memories you have of that little one, taking you farther and farther away from the moments you had together.

It's a necessary evil, I understand that, because we desperately need the the healing time brings.

But we need the memories too, and I'm so grateful to my friend for not being afraid to ask. For talking to me like she would talk to any "normal" mother. And for bringing the happiest times I spent with my little boy back to me for a while.

I smiled so much yesterday.

Missing

My sweet, my dear, my darling, you're so far away from me.
Though an ocean of tears divides us,
Let the bridge of our love span the sea.

Birthday kisses to heaven

I love you more and more every single day. I can't imagine how there will be enough of me to hold all that love eventually, it'll be so big.

I miss you. Happy 4th birthday, sweet one.

Balance

I'm much better tonight.

I just forgot that it's okay to allow yourself to feel sad. I wasn't purposely ignoring it, but that's absolutely what I was doing; focusing on the good and pretending there was no bad at all.

For balance and sanity it is, unfortunately, necessary to feel everything.

Once I gave in and just let myself hurt, I started to feel better. It sounds counter intuitive, but for some reason acknowledging the dark somehow makes it okay to bask in the light.

Okay, I'm not exactly basking - let's be honest. But I do feel better.

So what if there's a little mind-game action going on? That's necessary too. On days like this, very necessary indeed.

Crash

I'm blue. So blue tonight.

The lead up to Thomas' birthday has been so good - easier than last year which was easier than the year before, and so on. In fact, it's been almost happy in a strange sort of way. There are nearly 1200 people signed up to do random acts of kindness on Monday - and more who are not part of the Facebook group who have said they'll participate too. I have our good deed arranged and ready to go. My Beloved has the day off and we have plans to spend it together. It's good. It's all good.

But I've been so focused on all the things being done in his memory - and excited by them too - that I kind of forgot that he's a memory.

And I miss him. Oh my God, I miss him. So much that every fibre of my being is screaming for him; searching blindly in the dark for the missing piece of my heart.

It is easier. It gets better. But it's still the hardest thing I do, breathing in and out every day while I miss my boy. While I watch My Beloved miss his son. While the world around us carries on as if this massive wound was never inflicted in the first place.

The bigger world, I mean. The world that never knew of him and still doesn't.

I'm okay. It's strange that my heart can open up and bleed itself dry, but somehow fill itself up again and keep on beating. Over and over again.

But it does.

It's just that it still takes some getting used to. Four years isn't enough time to become accustomed to such agony.

Prayers and a plea

I admit that I don't really understand how prayers work anymore. I used to. Or I thought I did, anyway. But the useless, frantic prayers I said for Thomas weren't answered - at least not the way I wanted them to be - and I've remained very wary of the "power of prayer" ever since.

But just in case they are sometimes heard and answered in ways that bring us smiles instead of tears, could you remember a friend of mine in yours today? She underwent a kidney transplant a week ago yesterday and things aren't looking very good.

She says she can feel the prayers being sent her way. If this is true, I'd love for her to feel more. As many as you can spare.

I'm sending mine too, but I worry that mine are too small. Too weak. I have little faith in my own prayers and in their ability to be heard.

Please. Help?

Marathon

I've been thinking a lot about the past six years lately. To be clear, I don't regret a single thing we did. Not one single choice. We made the decisions we made very seriously and with a lot of thought and soul searching. And under great stress - and a shroud of sorrow too.

And I don't - and never will - regret Thomas or our other wee babies. They are my children. My heart and soul. They made me a mother, and they have helped to make me the person I am today, scars and all.

But there's something about coming out the other side of an emotionally traumatic period in your life that makes you turn around and stare back at it in awe. It knocks the breath out of me when I think that I've spent six years focused on just one singular goal. I've lost almost all of my 30s to my quest for a living child.

It's like I've opened my eyes up to the world around me for the first time in years.

My parents are old. Old. They need so much help now. They have aged so much since I first stuck my head up my uterus in the summer of 2003.

And me - I've aged too. I'm limping towards 40 with a stagnating writing career, a basement full of unused baby things, and a drawer full of condolence cards.

And I don't really know what to do now. All that keeps bouncing around my head is, "What now?"

I have some creative irons in the fire, as it were. Some ideas that I'm moving on. And freelance work continues to dribble in here and there. But essentially, I'm standing on the threshold of...something. And the wide openness of it all is scary.

Mostly.

My mind flickers back to high school when I still believed that anything was possible and the world was at my fingertips; full of ripe, juicy apples of opportunity just waiting for me to pluck them from the trees.

And I'm warming up to those feelings of excitement and possibility.

But I'm still scared. I'm worried that I'm damaged. Maybe irreparably. And too old. Too old for so many things now.

I dream of winning the lottery. I would buy a lifetime supply of yarn, a house full of books and a nursery full of plants and shut myself away in a happy cocoon of crochet, reading and gardening.

But odds never seem to be in my favour. Well, unless you count bad odds.

I get the feeling that nothing is meant to be easy. And I'm meant to keep walking towards whatever is waiting for me, regardless of how broken and old I might feel. Regardless of how useless I worry I am.

So I'm walking. One step at a time.

I love my cat...

...and she loves me.

Clearly.