Tomorrow is Harper's birthday, and I'm a wreck. I've spent the whole day fighting back tears or sneaking off to succumb to them. I still don't fully understand the ability to go from normal to full on grief in no time at all, tripping over a date on a calendar.
But here I am.
Today is the first time I've found being pregnant to be a major unwelcome distraction. Spawn's movements, the aches, the heartburn - I don't want to deal with any of that now. I just need to cry, to mourn, to scream, to feel. Being excited or happy about one baby feels like such a terrible betrayal to the baby we lost right now.
Lou keeps asking me what I need, and I don't know.
I want the pain to GO AWAY. I want to be less of a sobbing, snotty mess.
I want to hold Harper again, just one more time.
Tomorrow should be about birthday gifts and baby's first cake and cruising around furniture and babbling sounds.
Instead, tomorrow will be about unveiling and visiting memorial stones and bringing treats to the staff in the NICU. Lou wants logistical details - "what's your vision for tomorrow?" - but although normally my strong suit, I can't handle that now. I don't know what the timeframe for tomorrow will be, because I can't even grasp how I'm going to make it through tonight intact.
I don't want to feel this way anymore. I am so damn sick of crying. At the same time, I want the whole world to cry with me. I want the universe to stand up and howl because my daughter is gone and she is never, ever, ever coming back. I want to see my pain mirrored in the eyes of everyone I encounter, so we can all fall into a wet, messy heap of sobbing until we can't cry anymore.
IT SUCKS, IT SUCKS, IT SUCKS, IT SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!
The numbness is better.
All of the details of a year ago are so hard to remember and so impossible to forget. Was Harper kicking the night before we went to the hospital? Did I talk to her? Did I think about meeting my baby boy, as I thought she was at the time? Or was I too anxious, too worried about the heart and the feet and the NICU?
Those worries, the hours spent researching, all seem so ridiculous in retrospect.
They say there's no wrong way to mourn, to grieve. But the problem is, there's no right way either. There's no guidebook, no normal, no typical. You are forced to make it up as you go along, which means there are lots of nasty surprises along the way. Breakdowns, ugly cries, weeping in parking lots, snapping at those around you, unstoppable fits of sobbing.
Wounds you thought healed suddenly as raw as the day they first appeared.
As Shea was taking a bath a couple of nights ago, he was chatting happily about the cake we'd brought home from my office baby shower. "Do you think we could have more of baby Harper's cake later?", he asked.
"Sure," I told him. "But it's the new baby's cake, not baby Harper's."
"Oh," he said. "Sometimes I get confused."
"That's OK," I reassured him. "It is confusing. Harper was the new baby for a long time. I can see how it would be easy to get mixed up."
"I wish Harper hadn't died," Shea said. "And I wish London girl hadn't died, too."
"Me, too."
He wrinkled his forehead, thinking. "I think that if this new baby dies," he told me, "we shouldn't have any more babies."
I felt like my heart stopped beating for a minute. "Don't worry," I told him. "This new baby won't die."
This morning, in the midst of a crying jag over something trivial, I felt horrible for crying in front of Shea. "Why is mommy crying?", he wants to know. It was easier for him to understand my sadness over Harper when she was with us or recently gone. But I think it confuses him now. We have anew baby coming, Harper is more of an abstract concept to him now - I don't think it makes sense to him that I'd still be sad.
Sometimes, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me, either.
I have people I need to be strong for. Things I need to do. I can't spare the tears, I can't spare the time.
And yet...
Maybe this is what honors Harper. Maybe this is really the truest sign of her spirit.
That my little, complicated, broken bean has the power to wreck me, a full year later. We needed to let her go, she was so very, very, very sick, but even knowing that, I fell in love. And I can say with all honesty that I miss her. I wish I could hear her and touch her again.
I wish she'd been born healthy and this year had never happened.
Or do I?
Emotion and exhaustion is making me ramble. My thoughts are all over the place tonight, and I don't foresee a lot of sleep in my future. I feel like I owe it to Harper to get it together. To bring a perfection to her birthday - from unveiling and beyond - of the sort we were able to bring to her memorial service.
But I am just feeling so shattered, so scattered, at the moment.
I wish....
I don't know.
I just wish.
Maybe Walt Whitman had it right. "We were together. I forget the rest."
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