Come Some Rainy Day

I sit and laugh with friends
At what we've all been through
And I still catch my breath
When someone mentions you
We move on
And put those dreams away
Baby I still miss you
Come some rainy day

--“Come Some Rainy Day,” Wynonna

I’m having a hard time this morning. I want to be happy for my little boy since it’s his birthday. 

Luc at Bounce-a-Rama for his birthday

There’s fog outside today, and I can’t help but think that his little sister Thi is visiting him on his special day. She’s just like that fog, descended from the skies, so beautiful, but an ephemeral presence I can’t embrace or kiss.

I keep getting painful milestone updates from the pregnancy apps I used for Thi, so I had to export the data and reset the apps. Afterward I cried, looking at the development week Thi would’ve been as a fetus, my weight gain (now loss), arresting any further growth, hitting the button to wipe her from the apps’ memory.

I wonder when celebrations would be happy instead of sad. For now, I keep thinking of the birthdays and holidays where she wouldn’t be able to join us. How would next Christmas be, when the last one brought a double-death to my family’s door? 

I wish so bad she were here. These days, I must’ve entered the “bargaining” stage of grief. I want so much for a replacement, for the feeling of another healthy, strong baby growing in my tummy again, for my little boy to lift my shirt and exclaim, “Baby!” and be right about one actually being there. “Please,” I beg as I clutch my stomach in front of the mirror that’s steaming up from the shower being run, “Please bring her back to me.” Not the same baby. Not one that will completely heal this unbearable hurt. Just something besides this emptiness, this despondency. 

“I rather like that maybe Thi visits you on foggy days,” a friend of mine writes back when I tell her about the fog rolling in. “You can’t hold her, but she can wrap you.”

I see announcements and ultrasound images of babies who are approaching or have surpassed Thi’s gestation. I wish it were my baby still growing strong. I don’t hide these posts on social media or unfollow them. I force myself to look, albeit for just a short glimpse, to acknowledge the full up’s and down’s of life, to understand that time passes, even if I feel like my world ended the day after Christmas when they told me my baby girl was gone. I want to meet grief head-on, and move toward acceptance.