Baby Born and the Waves That Keep Crashing Over Me

Baby born in winter's sleep
Snowflakes fall, snuggle deep

Baby love, a year old today
Up with the sun, ready to play.

These are the first and last pages of a book I read to my daughter. I bought it when I had my first daughter. It tracks a baby born in winter through her first year. I hadn't read it for a while, because it always made me cry. I tried tonight, and found that the last page still makes me cry.

It's a fact, my daughter is gone. Daily life doesn't bring despair. I am, as I thought I would be, used to her death. It's horrible and yet a relief. I almost have to convince myself that she really was alive, that I really did live through that horrible day when she died. But I am relieved that I can't feel every moment of that day, and can't feel the way I did then.

The past week has been tough. Two days after I found out about my mother's breast cancer returning, my dad went to the hospital. He fell a couple of months ago and didn't tell anyone he'd hit his head. His speech was slurred, he was sleeping a lot, having memory problems, and even started dragging his foot. My mother finally convinced him to go to the hospital. Turned out he had a massive blood clot. They operated twice and he finally returned home two days ago.

I spent several days in limbo, trying to find out whether I needed to fly out right away or not. My brother, single and living much closer to our family, flew out the next morning. For me it was of course a matter of trying to figure out what to do with my daughter, whether my husband could be out of school for a couple of days, and whether we could even get a ticket for the day we needed it.

So Sunday night, we'll be flying out to see my parents. I am so relieved my dad isn't in the hospital. I hate hospitals. When I was 17, my mother was in a very bad car accident, and I suppose the trauma of seeing her there stuck with me. About 6 years ago, a friend of mine was in a bad accident, and while our husbands convinced me to go see her, they were both stunned when I burst into tears waiting to be let into the ICU.

I said goodbye to my daughter in the hospital. My friend (the one in the accident) tells me that doesn't even count as a hospital visit, really. But the mere thought of walking into a hospital makes me very anxious. So I am grateful I likely won't have to do that.

And yet I am still wondering, how often are the waves going to come crashing over my head? How many more times? I learned years ago to never say things can't get any worse, because they always can. They have been even worse (at times) in the past 18 months than I've written here.

I am still here though, still plugging along, and I guess that's all that matters. And if the only thing that has brought me to tears recently is Baby Born, then I guess I should consider myself fortunate.