It feels incredibly unsatisfying that it takes but a minute to list the essential facts and stats about him. I remember saying—to the first shrink that we saw after—that he was perfect, but he was dead. I think I want, I need that ‘but’. I don’t want A being dead to count as a part of who he is. Isn’t that why people have such a hard time talking to us about our children, because they intuitively see their deadness as their essence?
Read MoreThe day she died, I felt an ache in my heart. It intensified day by day month by month, and year by year it grew stronger. The ache was crippling and I curled up in a ball of hurt from which there was no escape. No amount of medication could ease the hurt. I feel it still, in my heart where she lives.
Read MoreI imagine Zia and I talking across a fire. She sits cross legged, smiling, a hot cup of cocoa in her hands. I am enthralled by her presence. I am the student, the listener. I imagine Zia and I hand in hand by the ocean. I look back and see our footprints, one bigger than the other. When I look back, she is gone.
Read MoreNow Wigglette will get a chance to play the role of the daughter I always wanted to raise. At first it was a comfort to know that some of that aching gap will be filled. Then came the pain from realizing that being my girl will no longer be something that is only yours. Once I get to witness her developing into a little girl, I fear that my sense of you will become even more obscure, and that I will be forced to leave some more of you behind. There will not be much left, I worry, beyond the knowledge that you were an infant and that I would have cared for you and that I still miss you deeply.
Read MoreMy son wants the brown bear in every picture. 'It feels like she’s my sister,' he says. The brown bear we love so much. The one that should have been hers. Merry Christmas Zia Bear. +++ To you, I won’t say Happy Holidays. I’ll say live. It's all we can do now. Live, rambling on about the ache in our hearts and souls. Ramble on the untold story. The incomplete tale. Hers, mine, ours.
Read MoreThe way life works is that we all change, all the time. But some of the time we change more rapidly. You’d be ten now, and I don’t have a clue who you’d be, or how you’d be in the world. What I know is that every second would’ve been new—a chance for you to discover something, to learn, to think, to feel. To find mischief. Or joy. Or joyous mischief.
Read MoreBereaved parents of lost babies and potential of all kinds: come here to share the technicolour, the vividness, the despair, the heart-broken-open, the compassion, and the other side of getting through this mess called grief.
what is this place?
the contributors
comment policy
contact
Parents of lost babies and potential of all kinds: come here to share the technicolour, the vividness, the despair, the heart-broken-open, the compassion we learn for others, having been through this mess — and see it reflected back at you, acknowledged and understood.
Thanks to photographer Xin Li and to artist Stephanie Sicore for their respective illustrations and photos.
: for one and all
: ttc | pregnancy | birth after loss
: not ttc | infertility after loss
: parenting after loss
: on the bookshelf
: how to stop lactation when there is no baby
: how to help a friend through babyloss
: how to plan a baby's funeral
subscribe
COPYRIGHT © 2019 GLOW IN THE WOODS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO UNAUTHORIZED REUSE.
