It was grey the day you died.
There was this weird misty rain coming down and I remember
stepping out of the car as we arrived at the hospital thinking, ‘this feels like the day she'll die.’
I knew. In that moment. I knew. Something deep within me
told me that you were not going to come home with us. Not that drizzly fall day
five years ago. Not ever.
The doctors had given us hope the day before, they actually
told us things were looking not-as-bleak and that we should go home and rest up
because you had a week full of surgeries ahead. A week full of surgeries. What
the hell kind of world do we live in where babies are put through the things you
were? I am so sorry, Peyton. More than you can ever know.
We took the doctors’ advice and missed out on spending the
last night of your life with you. A night that an intern later wrote to tell me
she spent in your room with another doctor, dressing you up in all your cute
clothes and having a ‘girl’s party.’
Things were looking up—so why, then, when I stepped out into
the brisk fall air to see you, did I know? Is that mother’s intuition? I feel
guilty to this day over having had that thought because a good mother, the
mother you deserved, would have stepped out thinking, ‘today is the day our
miracle will come. Today she will be cured.’
I failed you even in that.
This year is so, so different than the others in facing your
death day.
What I would like to do is crawl into my bed, pull the
covers over my head, and lay in the darkness with my anger and my bitterness
and my longing and my aching arms and my heavy heart and my depression and my
ptsd and my never-ending sadness at the thought of what you went through and
cry until my eyes are dry and my throat is sore and my body remembers.
I need to cry. To wallow. To feel, really, truly allow myself
to feel how absolutely shitty this is… again.
But I can’t.
I know that with the sun of tomorrow comes the
responsibilities of caring for your brother and sister and it is they who I
need to focus my energies on even if selfishly I want it to be my grief.
In that way I was lucky that you were our first because I
was able to go there, to really go where I needed to, to feel what I needed to,
to hurt how I needed to. I used to envy the loss moms who had other living
children to help them get through the day, but I know better now. I know how
much more difficult and complicated grief is when you have to be responsible
for more than yourself.
I’m in this odd place of having all I ever wanted with your
siblings and still yearning for something that can never be. And though my days
are so full right now I feel like I am getting to take less time to tend to my
wounds and it shows; in the way my body always hurts, the weight I carry
despite my best efforts with diet and exercise, my wrinkles, my awful sleeping
patterns and ever present fatigue, and worse—the many ways I feel I am less
than I could have been for your siblings.
When they tantrum or fight or do the things that two year
olds testing the waters do, I wish I was better. I wish I didn’t get
frustrated, or tired. I wish I was one of those supermoms that it feels to me
that every other mom is, who patiently smiles through their child lashing out.
Shouldn’t I be basking in the glory of motherhood every moment of every day?
Isn’t that what’s expected of me as a loss and infertility mom? Aren’t we
supposed to walk through life thanking every lucky star that we have been given
the opportunity to do this thing that comes so easily to others?
I know firsthand to never take one single beautiful moment
for granted and this is why I feel angry at myself for being tired, for being
frustrated, for selfishly wanting to lay in my bed and grieve you on your death
day. I am angry at myself for being five years out and still feeling so broken
at the thought of you. I am angry that your siblings have been robbed of
growing up with you. That we have been. That at twenty eight I had to buy a
cemetery plot and I became an old woman. That this broken world had to throw in
our face the horrific truth that no matter what God you pray to or how well you
try to live your life, cancer doesn’t care.
I spent a lot of time wondering where God was when we needed
him in the hospital and the early years of grief that followed your passing. I’ve
since given up on wondering and even that is guilt inducing because if I don’t
hold onto my faith how can I ever see you again in the next life?
Tomorrow marks five years since the most horrific of days.
Five years since impossible decisions to live with were made. Five years since
I held you knowing I would never hold you again. Five years since I watched
your spirit leave your body.
I’ve worked to move forward, as I know you would want me to.
I love your siblings with all my heart. I try to be what I think you would want
me to be in this world but there is this raw undercurrent that is ever present
reminding me that this is always going to hurt.
I’m so sorry Peyton. For what you went through. For what we
couldn’t do for you. For all you were robbed of in this life. I am so, so
sorry, and so sad.
