A Different Child by Pandora MacMillian

A Different Child by Pandora MacMillian

People notice
There's a special glow around you.

You grow
Surrounded by love,
Never doubting you are wanted;
Only look at the pride and joy
In your mother and father's eyes.

And if sometimes
Between the smiles
There's a trace of tears,
One day
You'll understand.

You'll understand
There was once another child
A different child
Who was in their hopes and dreams.

That child will never outgrow the baby clothes
That child will never keep them up at night
In fact, that child will never be any trouble at all.

Except sometimes, in a silent moment,
When mother and father miss so much
That different child.

May hope and love wrap you warmly
And may you learn the lesson forever
How infinitely precious
How infinitely fragile
Is this life on earth.

One day, as a young man or woman
You may see another mother's tears
Another father's silent grief
Then you, and you alone
Will understand
And offer the greatest comfort.

When all hope seems lost,
You will tell them
With great compassion,
"I know how you feel.
I'm only here
Because my parents tried again".

Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto.

I’ve got a secret I’ve been hiding, under my skin…..

In the loss journey, there are a lot of stops on the road. And I’ve reached another stop. so here goes if you haven't figured it out.

We are Pregnant again.

We are 24 weeks today. And, I did NOT tell anyone until these past few weeks. We couldn’t. Losing Shannon has taken away that ability to just put it out there and figure that everything will be ok. Because I don’t believe that it works that way. I worry every day that it doesn’t work that way. I don’t believe in happy endings. I believe that stuff just happens. And I have no end game. I get up every day and hope that nothing bad happened. I wake up every night and hope nothing bad happened. It is always in my mind.

And, rationally or irrationally, we needed to get to March, and out of February, when two of our babies died, and make sure that this one didn’t too. Yes, it may be morbid – welcome to my world…

And no, being pregnant does NOT take away any of the grief I feel over my little baby girl. Not a bit. In some ways, it makes it more acute. As I sit here, crying for Shannon and (Lucy and Tristan and Gregory and Richard and Dash and Josie and Tyler and Collin and for all the other lost babies of my dear other deadbaby moms,) I know that this is a really long road. And I am nowhere near the end. And even getting to the end of this pregnancy won’t bring me to the end of this road. This baby is pretty much due on what would have been Shannon’s first birthday, IF she lived. But she didn’t. So, what do you do with that? Knowing that in a different universe that that cake would have one more candle, and a different baby in front of it, and all you do is hope that this year, you have a reason to be happy.

This blog was never meant to be about anything or anyone but Shannon. And it always will be. I don’t plan on playing out this pregnancy publicly, and talking about it here all that much. I don’t think that works for me. But the feelings and the fears are very intermixed, and how I feel now is just another part of this journey – Shannon’s journey – and we are on this road together, Shannon, baby and me. And it has changed me and how I feel. And reality is that a lot of you already know. And more good thoughts in the universe can't hurt. And I feel it’s more intellectually honest to put it out there. And it only seems right to say it out loud. And I really hope it works out this time.

Thirteen months

Now that that first year, that sad sad terrible first year has come and gone, time is speeding by. It's so hard to believe that this much time has gone since we first met Shannon, and said goodbye to her. It's hard to believe that, this time last year I was planning her memorial garden, and today, I sit here watching the first green start to poke its way out of the cold Mid-Atlantic ground. There were so many tears then, and there are still tears now, but they don't come as often, and I find that my grief and sadness, while always there, are further back, and don't fly forward nearly as much as they used to, but when they do, it is still often unexpected and much stronger than you think that it should be, after thirteen months.

And I've come to recognize the person that I see when I look in the mirror again. I guess, for better or for worse, this is me, and it's probably as good of a me as I am going to get anytime soon, if ever. And I am ok with this new me, for the most part. I've learned that while grief comes in all shapes and sizes and likes to sneak up on you sometimes and say "boo" and see if it can scare the crap out of you, you develop this "worldliness" about you that helps you be less scared. That sounds weird. I guess it is more like a wariness or maybe a weariness, where you just know that this is a world where bad stuff can happen and that sometimes it does.

I don't know. It has just been a really long time.... And I miss my little girl.