Love Doesn't Stop

 I'm not sure how to say what I'm trying to say here so you can listen while I figure it out.

 People have said to me things like, be thankful for the kids you have and be thankful for the time you had and stuff like that, which I know you've already heard me say that a million times... But I'm going to try to explain something to you.

 When you have kids living and kids who aren't here anymore it changes nothing at all in the amount of love you have for any of them. It's just that the love for the ones here has an actual physical person that people can SEE that you love. When the person isn't here and you still love them, it causes a hole. A gaping, ragged wound that drips blood and tears.

 For some reason, and I suppose it's because some people haven't had any of their kids die so it's easy to just ignore the fact or forget that we have those holes because you can't see them. It's kinda like oxygen. Nobody cares or pays much attention to it unless they don't have it and then they are dying because they want it back.

 Love is like that. People can't see that you're using oxygen except that they know you are because you're not blue. But when your love has nowhere to go except to a little grave plot or two at a cemetery, people can't understand that it's like you're suffocating and dying a little for each little person who isn't there for you to hug and squish and shower your love on.

 People can understand when you say that your love doesn't divide it multiplies with each kid you have. What they need to figure out is that the love doesn't die along with the person you love. It stays alive and that is why we hurt. The thing they don't think about is that they went to a funeral and then they went home. Life didn't change for them except that they did something a little out of their normal every day routine and then went back to cleaning their oven. They feel bad for the people who had to have the funeral, but they don't get the fact that the people up there in the front row went home to a house with some kids and no baby.

 I went home to a house with four kids just like it was before. Except when I went home I still had a c-section incision. I had baby clothes in a bag that would never get worn. I had a box of diapers in the garage for a baby. A bassinet that wouldn't be used. A pile of maternity clothes I didn't need anymore. I had nights all stretched out in front of me where I could sleep till morning without waking up to feed a baby. There was no crying jags for reasons I couldn't figure out and there was nobody to interrupt me when I decided to clean the pantry if I felt like it.

 I could go on dates and be alone and have us time with my husband and never have to stop to feed a baby. I could take a shower and not have to wonder who was trying to hang the baby upside down to see what would happen.

 But I didn't want any of that. I wanted sleepless nights and nights that I would fall asleep sitting up nursing and wake up with a neck ache that rivaled the tin man in Wizard of Oz. I wanted spit up on my shirt and a baby pulling my hair. I wanted my incision to mean something. I wanted to watch a little blonde boy and a little dark haired boy destroy the house gleefully and I wanted to have to shout, "Radley get off the counter! You'll fall down and crack your skull!" But I don't have to because he's not here to help Revven dump out my sugar or fall off the chair. He'll never take the cushions off the couch or use broom handles to shoot the piano.

 There are so many things that we do with our kids that we can't ever do with the ones who aren't here and it's not something you just forget about or don't talk about because it's painful. You talk about them because they were alive just as much as the ones everybody can see. They just never made it to the stage they were accepted as humans. People can understand more if the child was older, because they can see the missing spot. But when they're younger, if they weren't even born alive or at a certain age, people would rather pretend they didn't even happen because nobody got to know them or see them.

 People choose to forget that when their kids were inside they started getting to know them by the thumps and the kicks and the general weirdness babies do while growing. And when they die, it's a blessing and a curse for the dads. Because even though they never got to know them the way we did because we felt all that, they feel sad because they didn't. But it's also easier since they didn't. They can still do their job because that's what they always do even if there IS a baby at home. And it's easier to push all the pain aside and focus on work and staying busy so you don't cry at the steel factory when you're picking up a load. Take note, I'm not saying it's easy for them at all. I'm saying it's easiER because they don't have the constant reminders.

 For the moms, that baby WAS our job. But our job got taken away and our love goes into heaven, it isn't stuck in a granite headstone at a cemetery. It's not living in the past, it's love that goes into eternity.