5th Heavenly Birthday

Happy 5th heavenly birthday to our beautiful angel girl. Momma misses you every minute. Too many emotions to say more...

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Already

I am already thinking about the fact that Olivia's next birthday will be her fifth. We've decided to fundraise to purchase a pretty paver in our local zoo's beautiful carousel courtyard for her. The paver will read "In Memory of Olivia (middle name) (last name)". The total cost is only $100. We have a website through ChipIn! where family and friends can go to donate through our personal PayPal account. I'm even thinking about having a little get-together at the carousel courtyard with a birthday cake for those who donate. Yes, I think I will. I love so much that girl of mine.



Her fifth birthday will be on May 1, 2012, but the fundraiser ends on January 30, 2011 to allow time to submit the engraved paver request and to have the engraving done.

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4th Birthday Visit

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It's Personal

Some gals who check this blog regularly ask why I never post anything personal. I'm really not sure why. It's not that I don't still grieve a little every day. It's not that I'm worried that friends and family will read it and judge me. I don't know why. Lately I've been wanting to post something personal. It's some feelings and thoughts I've been having. I've been thinking it over in my mind for about a week now and had all the perfectly formed sentences in my brain to correctly express what I wanted to convey. Now it's all left me. However, it seems important to me so I'll press on.

Olivia's third angel day or birthday, or whatever you'd like to call it was May 1st. It's never overwhelmingly depressing. Actually a little bittersweet. The reason for the bitter is obvious, but the sweet seems surprising. Just now I'm wondering where that comes into play and I think it must come from the knowledge I have of where she's at and that we are an eternal family and that I will see her again one day. Point is that it wasn't a horrible day/week. Of course I was sad and cried and had a tough time, but it wasn't horrible...until the next weekend.

The little boy across the street was born a week after Livy. I remember being pregnant right along with his mom and chatting a couple of times about the babies. And about a month after Liv was born, on my first venture to the mailbox, her husband asked if we had our baby early because I was obviously not pregnant any more, I said we did, and because of the smile on his face that told me he was going to say congratulations or something of the sort I immediately spat out that "she didn't make it". For some reason I remember the exact words I used. Which somehow reminds me of how the cleaning ladies at the hospital the day after Olivia was born and we were in a postpartum room told us congratulations and I somehow smiled and said thank you.

Anyway, every time I see this precious little boy playing in the yard I remember Olivia. Every time he falls I want to run to his rescue. Every time he does something big for his age I feel a little proud. It is odd. It feels odd to me. But it just happens.

Well, this little fella had a huge third birthday party in his front yard with balloons, decorations, a big bounce house, lots of family, and tons of presents. That was a horrible day. I couldn't tear my eyes away. I sat just inside a front window in the shadow and balled. I tried to move. Then I walked away a few times, but I always came right back. I watched this family celebrate the third anniversary of this precious boy's birth and grieved at the emptiness of our home. Yes, we have been blessed with a rainbow baby. But that rainbow baby should have an older sister. There should be half deflated balloons in our home from the previous weekend when we had his sister's third birthday party. There should be a room downstairs painted pink with lacy curtains. I should have been telling her to hush as not to wake baby brother from his nap. It was the worst day I've had in a long time.

Then came Mother's Day. I didn't go to the first hour of church because our rainbow baby was napping, but I doubt I would have went anyway. I have gone every Mother's Day in years past, but because of that birthday party this Mother's Day was harder somehow. All in all it turned out to be another bittersweet but not horrible day.

Then there was Memorial Day. This day has never really gotten to me. I think I recall in a past post saying the same thing. Where I grew up, in the South, Memorial Day was a day to honor the deceased military. Not until I moved to the West did I learn that people used it as a day to remember all their beloved dead. My first Memorial Day after losing Olivia was spent in frustration at all the children at the cemetery who trampled the lawn and played with all the flowers, wind chimes, and toys left at the angel's graves. The next year I bought and put up a picket fence around Liv's grave to keep the kids away. It actually worked. It's been more of a day to protect "her" than to remember her/grieve for her. When I went the day before Memorial Day this year to put up her fence it was dusk. As I started to push the stakes of the fence into the ground tears started to fall. Angry tears. Anger from having a daughter's grave to have to protect. Angry that she wasn't here and I had to care for her grave instead of her. Then they turned to tears of sadness and I wept. I got all the fencing put down except for the piece at the bottom of her headstone. Though there were people around I knelt down, laid my head on her headstone, and wept. I felt I had no strength to do anything but that. No strength left to hold back the tears. No strength left to pick myself up and walk away. It just happened. And gratefully the few people there just let it happen. It didn't take too long for me to use the happy thoughts of where she is and how I'll see her again one day to drive the sadness away and dry up those tears. I suppose it was a needed cry. Well, anyway aren't all cries needed cries? I drove home sane again, for every mother of an angel goes through seconds of insanity during these brief and intense grieving moments.

The next day we visited her grave. The cemetery was absolutely gorgeous. It seemed every grave was decorated with flowers and/or balloons. Driving to "Baby Land" Liv's place was easy to see thanks to the pretty, white fencing. Our earthly family of three got out and placed our gifts there for her. Sometimes my visits are unfeeling, like I just haven't got the energy to let myself feel anything. This was one of those times. We took our pictures and left.

Just now while typing this I realize how the fencing is the only way I can show my motherly protection for her. I've always realized how the flowers, ribbons around the top of the vase, dolls with bottles, figurines and trinkets are the only gifts I can give her, but just now realized what that fence truly means to me.

So, it's been a tough month or so, on and off. I do feel. I do grieve. Though I don't post it often here I am experiencing these things right along with you angel mothers, and I wanted to share this most recent span of grief with you. You are not alone. All my love.

Another Birthday

Happy 3rd Birthday

my sweet Olivia Marie.

I'm sure it will be a happy one.

Normal

Normal is having tears behind every smile when you realize someone important is missing from all the important events in your family's life. Normal for me is trying to decide what to take to the cemetery for birthdays, Christmas', Thanksgivings, New Years, Valentine's Day, July 4th, and Easter. Normal is feeling like you know how to act and are more comfortable with a funeral than a wedding or birthday party, yet feeling a stab of pain in your heart when you smell the flowers and see the casket. Normal is feeling you can't sit another minute without getting up and screaming because you just don't like to sit through anything. Normal is not sleeping very well because a thousand what ifs and why didn't Is go through your head constantly. Normal is reliving that day continuously through your eyes and mind, holding your head to make it go away. Normal is having the TV on the minute I walk into the house because the silence is deafening. Normal is staring at every baby who looks like she is my baby's age, and then thinking of the age she would be now and not being able to imagine it, then wondering why it is even important to imagine it because it will never happen. Normal is every happy event in my life always being backed up with sadness lurking close behind because of the hole in my heart. Normal is telling the story of your child's death as if it were an everyday commonplace activity and then seeing the horror in someone's eyes at how awful it sounds and yet realizing it has become a part of my normal. Normal is each year coming up with the difficult task of how to honor your child's memory and her birthday and survive these days, and trying to find the balloon or flag that fits the occasion. Happy birthday? Not really. Normal is my heart warming and yet sinking at the sight of something special my baby loved. Thinking how she would love it, but how she is not here to enjoy it. Normal is having some people afraid to mention my baby. Normal is making sure that others remember her. Normal is after the funeral is over everyone else goes on with their lives, but we continue to grieve our loss forever. Normal is not listening to people compare anything to this loss. Unless they too have lost a child NOTHING, even if your child is in the remotest part of the Earth away from you, compares. Losing a parent is horrible, but having to bury your own child is unnatural. Normal is taking pills, and trying not to cry all day because I know my mental health depends on it. Normal is realizing I do cry every day. Normal is disliking jokes about death or funerals, bodies being referred to as a "fetal demise" or a "product of conception" when you know they once were someone's loved one. normal is being impatient with everything and everyone but someone stricken with grief over the loss of your child. normals is sitting at the computer crying, sharing how you feel with chat buddies who have also lost a child. normal is feeling a common bond with friends on the computer in England, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, and all over the USA, but never having met any of them face to face. Normals is a new friendship with another grieving mother, talking and crying together over our children and our new lives. Normal is not listening to people make excuses for God, "God may have done this because...". I love God. I know my baby is up in heaven, but hearing people trying to think up excuses as to why healthy babies were taken from Earth is not appreciated and makes no sense to this grieving mother. Normals is avoiding McDonald's and Burger King playgrounds because of small happy children that break your heart when you see them. Normal is asking God why he took your child's life instead of yours and asking if there is even a God. Normal is knowing I will never get over this loss, in a day or a million years. And last of all, normal is hiding all the things that have become "normal" for you to feel so that everyone around you will think that you are "normal". This "normal" is torture.
-Unknown

Happy Heavenly Birthday, Olivia

Two years can go by so quickly, yet so slowly. We miss you every single day. We pray you know how much we love you. We can hardly wait until we meet again. Happy heavenly birthday, baby. We know you'll have a wonderful day in heaven.