megatronix

You'd be turning five years old this week. Going to kindergarten in the Fall. I never even got to the second trimester with you (we were just one week from that goalpost). In the grand scheme of things, it was so short a time, just 13 weeks, that there are times I don't want to grieve you anymore, and don't want to think of you. I'm sorry to admit that to you.

Many people think we mothers shouldn't. Think of you, that is. Mourn you. As if it were a choice, anyway!

Maybe we shouldn't get attached so early, some people believe. But how could I not? That's certainly not a choice either, how deeply and wholly we fall in love.

I believe(d?) in throwing myself headlong into the bliss I felt when I first found out about you. So I did. I sank into it, and settled there as comfortable as a robin in its nest. The familiarity of the nausea. The dreams I carried for you, everything from being kissed from outside my belly by your big brother, to you and your brother laughing, arguing, attending each other's weddings.

And then you were just impossibly... gone.

Grief runs through my veins some days, like molasses or liquid lead, slowing me down, heavy with the weight of mourning. Some days, I am able to think of you with a sense of calm and at peace, knowing the raw open wound of losing you couldn't stay so very wide open forever. Some of it has healed, the hole has grown smaller, though the scar remains forever.

And then there's the feelings about the feelings. Mostly guilt. Guilt for feeling ok. Guilt for feeling not ok. I'm learning to untie the knots of binding that guilt has wrapped around me. I'm getting there. I'm good at undoing knots.

* * *

And then there's you, my son, the Boy Who Lived, not to steal from Rowling, of course. You even look a little Harry Potter-ish at times, Homer, with your bangs swooping across your browline, and your glasses perched on the bridge of your nose.

You know about The Lost Baby (which also sounds like a novelization of sorts), and it's good that you do, I think. I know you've grieved her too, telling me you wish she'd made it. Me too, sweetheart.

I say her and she, but I don't know really. She was someone to me, so she became more, she became her. She became Marie. And she remains forever in my memory.

And you, dear sweet Homer, I feel such intense gratitude for you. You don't even know. How could you, though? I loved you in my dreams, long before I ever became pregnant. And from the moment I knew of your poppyseed sized presence within my womb, planted there, growing in me, I laid my hands on my belly, and said "Hi, Baby," as joyful tears ran down my cheeks. You're quite literally a dream come true.

It's funny how things evolve, I think. I *expected* a huge wave of love the moment I met you, and for that love to remain at that heightened state for all time, 24/7. I thought that's what people meant when they spoke of the strength of a mother's love. But it's different, and deeper than that.

I did feel immense love for you when I found out about you, and all through my pregnancy, and definitely from the moment I first held you. There was that intense wave of love that hit me hard when you were two days old, and I sobbed with the beauty of it all, as all my pregnancy memories replayed and I stared into your gorgeous sleeping face, seeing it all again, going to the mall, sitting on the couch, the visits with friends who felt you kick, all of it now through the lens of knowing it was you, it was always you that whole time, within me, and then without, lying right there in my lap, instead of my belly.

But that insane level of love can't remain at that intensity all the time. But it can and does course through me, and it does envelop me like a second skin, so sleek and so much a part of me, that I often don't actively think of it, yet it's always there, and it's so vitally important that I'd be nothing without it.

I carry you with me wherever I go in the world. I feel like people must see me and just know that I have this little boy that I love to the ends of the universe and back again. It must be that obvious, mustn't it?

It's hard to describe the love for your children, Homer, the kind of love that makes everything else matter less. The kind of love that remains even when you're furious with me, even when I'm furious with you, the kind of love that transcends paltry things like time and space. I've loved you before you existed, and will long after I no longer do. I love you for every day that I've known you, and every day that is to come. I love you well into your years of adulthood, as a grown man cuddling his own children (I see it so clearly), and I love you into your time as an old, gray-bearded man. This is a love I send to you, a stream of steady golden light under your feet, to carry you through this life.

* * *

And Marie, my love for your brother showed me how to love you, too. Fully, wide open heart, from the very start. It's no wonder, is it? I had an amazing example to draw from. I want you to know without a doubt: I love you too. From before you ever existed, through all the future dreams I carried for you. I'm sorry you didn't get to experience all of it. But I'm so glad that you were here, within me, and that you were treasured the entire time you were known. I treasure you still.

* * *

I treasure you both. Thank you both for showing me this light; it glows in my heart, for all time.

Love always,
Mommy