Re-birth

9 months today and my thoughts are scattered but I keep coming back to the notion that it takes 9 months to grow a life. 9 months to nurture a baby in your womb. 9 months to create a living being and bring them into the world. Yet it takes only a second, just one moment, for a life to end.

I am bitter about that-there should have been a little more time. Sudden, unexpected death is so wrenching, ripping, aching, mind-blowing. Similar to giving birth though there is no reward at the end of death. No gift in the end that is so great that it makes you forget all the pain you went through to get there, and be willing to do it all again for a just a little taste of the joy it brought.

No, in death you are left with nothing but the reverberating pain that echoes off itself. Continually bouncing back at you. Never knowing which angle it's coming from. Never really going away and always right below the surface. The pain never becomes a memory with death as it does after childbirth- the pain is always felt even if dulled with time. The sting is still there.

Those left in the wake are forced to re-birth themselves; to make themselves new in light of all that has been forced upon them. I am rebuilding myself; out of necessity, not by choice. Little by little learning who I am again. I'm angry about this too because I don't want to do this. It's hard. It's a struggle. Growing pains I guess. Angry because this process will take much longer than 9 months. Much longer.

I took the girls to his grave today for the first time. I showed Addie his temporary marker on the ground and said, "This is Daddy." She immediately kissed her hand as if blowing him a kiss and then touched the stone. Allie copied her. I cried as both of them continued to blow him kisses. How do they know to kiss a stone they have never seen, that only abstractly represents a father they barely remember? This blows my mind and is incomprehensible to me. We brought balloons to the grave. They each kissed their balloons and then let them go so we could send kisses to Daddy in heaven. They loved watching those balloons float away and all I could think is how badly I wish we could float away too. Drift somehow to a place where we could see him. Meet again even for just a minute.

But when that minute ended would the pain well up again as bad as the first time he was ripped away from me? Would I start all over again in this... this ugliness?

That I could not bear. So the alternative is to keep moving forward. Keep growing.
Keep pushing...