June 11th, 2014

I have a confession to make, I have been actively avoiding my blog. There are times where my blog is great for me to figure out how I feel, unless there are times (like right now) that I don’t want to know how I’m really feeling. Or, I feel fine and I am scared that blogging will bring out some sort of hidden emotion I didn’t know was there.

Tomorrow would have been Mason’s 2^nd Birthday.

I have a weird calmness to me, something I am not used to feeling leading up to and surrounding this date. I also feel some sadness, wondering what our lives would be like right now with a 2 year old and a 1 year old but mostly I feel… nothing. That sounds colder than I mean it to, but I am not overcome with any sort of emotion, good or bad. Does that mean I’m healing or does that mean I am a heartless bitch who has already forgotten the pain? My daughter definitely fills many holes in my heart and I think as she grows up those holes will get smaller.

The best way I can explain my eerie disconnected emotions is that sometimes it feels like I’ve lived two separate lives… one with horrible pain and sadness and one with complete joy and happiness. Sure, I still get sad sometimes and it’s hard to believe that I’ve actually had this experience at all. It almost feels like someone else’s life. Like I’ve been watching a reality show of my life, while hanging out in the present with my daughter. It’s all very strange, and the fact that I’m not a mess is very foreign to me! I’ve lived so much of the last few years as a hot mess, trying to pretend like I’ve had it together. Maybe now, I am just more comfortable in my not-put-together-ness. I’m not really sure of the reasoning behind it, but I can tell you I am grateful for it. I know I felt similar on this day last year.

I know that sounds weird too, to be grateful to not be feeling anything… I guess I’m grateful to not be missing any moments of my daughter’s life because I was too busy being sad. One day I will tell her about her brother, and that it was the hardest thing her parents had to go through, but I also want to explain to her that through that experience I learned so much about myself, and so much about her daddy. I want her to know through this pain, we came out stronger. I would love to tell her why it is that we go to the beach on June 11^th every year, why we always wear blue on that day. I would also love to tell her that this experience made me into the mom I am for her now. But for now, it’s kind of like it gets to stay our little secret. My covert mission to becoming a better mom if you will. She’s too young to understand now anyway, and one day we will tell her all about Mason… although on some level I suspect she knows she has a guardian angel, because she’ll do something or say something that makes me think he’s watching over her.

As far as our plans for tomorrow go, we can’t go to the beach like we have done in the past. It’s too far from where we live now, but we will be near water. For some reason when it comes to Mason, I think of being close to the water and it makes me feel close to him. So we will have a family day, all in blue, near the water. I already let me husband know to give me some space tomorrow so I can write to him in his journal that I started before I even knew I was pregnant. I’ll tell him all about our year, his sister, our life. I know that he knows I miss him every day, that he is always on my mind… I know that he can feel the love I radiate towards him every day. I really do think my sense of calm and relief came from the comfort I found in Heaven Is For Real. I think about it every day, and it makes my heart so full, I don’t think I have the words to really describe the comfort that book gave me, knowing I’ll get to meet him one day. I still can’t say his name out loud and have a hard time hearing someone else say it but I’ll get there.

All of this gave me the freedom and courage to put those feelings aside so I can really be present for my daughter, which is a gift in itself. I feel like many moms who have lost a child feel guilty of those fleeting moments where you sort of forget what’s happened. Like you always have to be sad or people think you didn’t love your child enough. There are times when I am in the moment with my daughter or my husband or friends and I forget that this horrible thing happened to me… and you know what? That’s ok. He wouldn’t want me to never be able to enjoy my life. I think the concept of being ok with “forgetting” once in a while is really hard for moms like me, especially because it’s not one of those things that people want to admit they do, or something anyone wants to admit to. It’s life though, you can’t always be in your grief (just like you can’t always be happy) and once I realized it was ok to not think about it all the time it was so liberating! It was also freeing to see that just because I wasn’t “in it” for a while, didn’t take anything away from my experience or my love for him.

Tomorrow my son would have been 2, and sometimes I don’t know how to feel about it. Today though, I feel good and tomorrow? Who knows. I do know we will remember and celebrate him the way we do it best: as a family.