10-04-2015, Capture Your Grief - Day 4, Dark and Light

Our Abigail was a child we very much wanted. Her middle name is Miriam which means "longed for child" in Aramaic. She will always be longed for now. While we were pregnant, Gary was laid off. They combined his position with another and kept the gentleman who had been there more than a decade. During that month, after he was laid off but before we found out she was gone, she was a real light in our days. Someone we were looking forward to with such excitement. No matter what else was going on, we were having a baby!

Now each day feels a little bipolar, swinging back and forth between light and dark. There are times when I can think about her and smile. Trying to imagine her, all the things she knows and sees that I can merely guess at. The picture in my mind, well it is more of a feeling of arriving there one day and her running with her long red hair swinging and bouncing, a huge smile on her face with her arms out to give me a hug.

Then in the next moment there is nothing but despair and tears. The stark realization that Heaven is a long ways away, that I am serving a sentence of life without parole. That I know nothing about this person that holds a special place in my heart, that I never will, that even the wish for a red head daughter is just that a wish.

Then the next moment I feel like she just is, that she has to be. Just like I knew we were having another daughter, before she was born. Then at the height of despair I think perhaps when we die that is it, and she is forever gone. Then I remember the promises of the Bible and again feel them to be true in a way that is unexplainable. There is the light of trying my best to function to have ok almost normal moments in public. I read to the kids at the library. I handle my co-op class. Then I come home exhausted, wrap up in a blanket, and somehow look up having lost 3 hours.

Every day is like the view we saw while driving today, light and shadow, in and out of clouds. Sometimes in the valley and sometimes on the mountain. But we will get there, one step at a time, by holding on to those things we know to be true. I know this is not the end, and I will not feel crazy like this forever.