This has been a week of reflection for me. I've been struggling with little things that often seem not so little. And then I think back...so many things have gone wrong this year. How much more can I take?
It's sometimes when we are down that we come up with uplifting lessons for ourselves, isn't it? I realized that this is my life. Of course, had I been given the choice, I wouldn't have chosen it exactly the way it's been given to me. I would have kept many things the same, but I would have deleted the part where my son died. But for reasons that are beyond me, these are the cards I've been dealt. This is MY life. It's not perfect and I'm sure, many look at me and feel relieved that this is not their lives. I have to work with what I have, I have to somehow, overcome all this. Overcome losing my son, overcome any job problems, overcome the sadness and the pain and any other crap that might come at me.
I'm in no way a hero or a strong person. Going through something this horrible doesn't make you stronger. In fact, it breaks you in a million pieces and you patiently need to piece yourself back toghether. And you don't always put all the pieces in the right places. Sometimes, you lose a few of them in the process.
This has been the toughest year of my life. Toughest than anything I've ever faced before and I hope to God that I will not face anything harder than this. And I'm not going to lie: there has been times where things got so horribly tough that the tought of ending it all seemed like the only possible way out for me. But despite all that horror, despite all that pain, I am happy. Yes, I am. I'm not sure how to explain this, it makes little sense, I know, but there are great things happening in my life. The thing is, bad things don't happen in isolation, they are often accompanied with a few good things. We just don't see them sometimes because in our minds this equation is always true: BAD > GOOD.
One of the things I am eternally grateful for is the fact that this tough year has brought my husband and I even closer together. We have a new appreciation for each other and our shared loss somehow solidified our love for each other. It's almost like we needed to fill the whole in our hearts with something positive, something sweet...and that's what our love for each other has done. In a book written by Anne Dauphine, a woman who lost her daughter at the age of 2 to a fatal genetic disease, wrote "when you cannot add days to your life, you should add life to your days." Inadvertently, this is what we have been doing.
Parents have grand dreams for their children, but mostly, we all hope our kid has a normal life. We all wish to see our kids take their first steps, go to school, graduate, get married, have kids, land a good job, lead happy lives. Those are universal wants. Those are simple wants. And yes, some parents will see their sons and daughters become president or Nobel Prize Winners...wouldn't we all love that for our children? But mostly, all we want is for them to have a normal and happy life. And it's this simple desire that makes the loss of a child so increadibly hard. Bereaved parents like me had those exact same dreams for our babies, but we never got to see any of them come true.
As I sit here, pondering about life and death, I ask myself, 'what's the point'? When most adults die, we can say "he or she had a full life", "he or she accomplished so much". I can't say that about Leo. All I can say about him is that he was born a perfect little boy, that he smiled and that he died in my arms. What did he accomplish? What can we remember him by, especially when none of our friends and family got to meet Leo?
Leo obviously changed our lives. And while his death is something I would eliminate, if I could, I am grateful for his short life. A lot of pain came with his death, but a lot of joy came with his birth. Those feelings were often mixed. I gave birth to him knowing that he would die. But I was also in awe of this little being, in my arms. This human being that we created.
I still don't know why this happened (will I ever?). I do know that Leonardo has changed our lives, that knowing him has made me better person. I also understand now that the pain will never go away, but that it is something that I have started learning to live with. I can be happy and hurting at the same time. It's possible. In fact, that's my everyday now.
It's sometimes when we are down that we come up with uplifting lessons for ourselves, isn't it? I realized that this is my life. Of course, had I been given the choice, I wouldn't have chosen it exactly the way it's been given to me. I would have kept many things the same, but I would have deleted the part where my son died. But for reasons that are beyond me, these are the cards I've been dealt. This is MY life. It's not perfect and I'm sure, many look at me and feel relieved that this is not their lives. I have to work with what I have, I have to somehow, overcome all this. Overcome losing my son, overcome any job problems, overcome the sadness and the pain and any other crap that might come at me.
I'm in no way a hero or a strong person. Going through something this horrible doesn't make you stronger. In fact, it breaks you in a million pieces and you patiently need to piece yourself back toghether. And you don't always put all the pieces in the right places. Sometimes, you lose a few of them in the process.
This has been the toughest year of my life. Toughest than anything I've ever faced before and I hope to God that I will not face anything harder than this. And I'm not going to lie: there has been times where things got so horribly tough that the tought of ending it all seemed like the only possible way out for me. But despite all that horror, despite all that pain, I am happy. Yes, I am. I'm not sure how to explain this, it makes little sense, I know, but there are great things happening in my life. The thing is, bad things don't happen in isolation, they are often accompanied with a few good things. We just don't see them sometimes because in our minds this equation is always true: BAD > GOOD.
One of the things I am eternally grateful for is the fact that this tough year has brought my husband and I even closer together. We have a new appreciation for each other and our shared loss somehow solidified our love for each other. It's almost like we needed to fill the whole in our hearts with something positive, something sweet...and that's what our love for each other has done. In a book written by Anne Dauphine, a woman who lost her daughter at the age of 2 to a fatal genetic disease, wrote "when you cannot add days to your life, you should add life to your days." Inadvertently, this is what we have been doing.
Parents have grand dreams for their children, but mostly, we all hope our kid has a normal life. We all wish to see our kids take their first steps, go to school, graduate, get married, have kids, land a good job, lead happy lives. Those are universal wants. Those are simple wants. And yes, some parents will see their sons and daughters become president or Nobel Prize Winners...wouldn't we all love that for our children? But mostly, all we want is for them to have a normal and happy life. And it's this simple desire that makes the loss of a child so increadibly hard. Bereaved parents like me had those exact same dreams for our babies, but we never got to see any of them come true.
As I sit here, pondering about life and death, I ask myself, 'what's the point'? When most adults die, we can say "he or she had a full life", "he or she accomplished so much". I can't say that about Leo. All I can say about him is that he was born a perfect little boy, that he smiled and that he died in my arms. What did he accomplish? What can we remember him by, especially when none of our friends and family got to meet Leo?
Leo obviously changed our lives. And while his death is something I would eliminate, if I could, I am grateful for his short life. A lot of pain came with his death, but a lot of joy came with his birth. Those feelings were often mixed. I gave birth to him knowing that he would die. But I was also in awe of this little being, in my arms. This human being that we created.
I still don't know why this happened (will I ever?). I do know that Leonardo has changed our lives, that knowing him has made me better person. I also understand now that the pain will never go away, but that it is something that I have started learning to live with. I can be happy and hurting at the same time. It's possible. In fact, that's my everyday now.
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