Capture Your Grief - Day 8 - Beautiful Mysteries

I've read and been told that it's healthy, and good for healing to imagine your child either as who you think they would be or as you imagine that they are. Today's topic is about that. This exercise is difficult, because Gary can never play along. He always says that anything that he could imagine wouldn't be real anyway. I most often imagine her as I think she is in Heaven now, because it's painful to see her absence here.

I have two friends. One who had a healthy little girl a week before Abigail. And another who had a little boy born the week before Abigail's due date. The both of them remind me so often of what she would be doing at this moment if she was here. We just celebrated Abigail's first stillbirthday. But she really should be only about 10 months old right now.

There are days when the two oldest are working on their school work, while I help our youngest living child learn to trace her letters. When I can almost imagine out of the corner of my eye, a little girl with whispy red hair, pulling all the books off the bookcase. I can remember the reaction when the other three were small enough to do that. Fussing at them, putting all the books back on the shelf. Giving them that not happy face, shaking my head and saying no, before redirecting them somewhere else. The inevitable trek back to the bookshelf, that would be followed by popping a hand, for attempting to pull books apart.

And I am reminded of something Sis. Kate told me once, that she realized later, that her "shadow child" grew along side of her other two, but he was a child that she never had to spank, never had to fuss at. One who never felt down and hurt his knee, one who never experienced heart ache. One that she never messed up in parenting. Today she is gone. I like to imagine that the first thing she did after giving Jesus the biggest hug ever, was that she found Steven, and got to finally meet him. I look forward to the day I get to do the same.

I took this picture laying on Abigail's grave on her birthday. I've always like the way that trees look upside down.