legacy

I still write to her. Everyday.  I still write about how beautiful she is, how much I miss her.  I love her so very much.

It's amazing how you can think you know what love is, and then when you really have it you realize you knew nothing.  I knew nothing of love before her.  Absolutely nothing.  Now it's just a matter of turning it into action.  Taking love and making it compassion and patience and all sorts of other things.  Using love to heal pain, and fear, and everything.  I am just now learning what love really is, what pure boundless love from your soul truly is.

I'm still so angry so much of the time.  Or down and sad about what we've been through.  About why her, why us, what would have changed everything and why can't we go back and do it differently.  If I can find a way I most certainly will.  I will fix it when the day comes.

But until then it seems it is only darkness.  So I gotta learn how to let love come in. And sprout out in all sorts of ways.

I need more time to really sit and write.  I just have been so busy.  I'm going to have to make time to just be alone, write to Virginia, write here, write anything.

OOHhhh this pain does not end.  It gets easier to carry, easier to face and deal with.  But it never hurts any less.  All I can do for her is give her a legacy of love.

Just like donations.  Like the donation of my hair.  Hopefully it was used and is now a wig for a child who needed it.  But who gave that gift?  Because it came from my body, but it was inspired by my perfect child.  Virginia is the one who got that hair to those children.  Virginia did that.  Things like that are her legacy.  What we can be inspired to do for her, that is her legacy.  I want it to be a legacy of pure love.  Because she gave me the strongest love in the world: the bond of a child and her parent.

Her's will be a legacy of love.  She will spread her little light.  Because she will.  Because I will never stop fighting for her.  Because she will not be forgotten.  She will be as big a part of this family as everyone here right now.  She will do amazing things through us, all of us.  Through all of the people she teaches.  She will spread her little magenta light everywhere.

I love her more than words.  Just more than I can say.

when nothing works out like it should.

It seems just when you think you've got life figured out and everything might be almost okay and you've been brave enough to actually come up with a new plan, life throws a curve ball and your plan goes to shit.

I don't plan like I used to, but I guess I still plan a little.  I'll just never learn to stop that completely because it is 100%  pointless.

In a book I love about Taoism it says that you should have no wants or desires or plans.  You should just live.  Just go with it and chill out.

I wish.

I am trying to live on a smaller scale though, one day at a time.  What do I feel like I should do today?  What can I do today?  In this one day?  Because this day is really all you've got.  You could be dead five minutes from now.  And then all that worrying is for nothing.

It's a hard concept...to just live a day at a time and not plan, or worry.  But it's just the way you have to live if you ever want to make it through tragedy.  You just have to focus on this moment and what you can do with it.  Making plans means disappointment when they don't work out.  Thinking of the whole future is just too overwhelming.  Just focus on one day at a time.  This day is all there is.

Father's Day

Father's Day is this weekend.  I really thought it was next weekend.  But it's coming up fast.

Just as bereaved mothers shouldn't be forgotten on Mother's Day, bereaved fathers shouldn't be forgotten on Father's Day.

They are sometimes forgotten in general, because everyone focuses on how the mother is doing.  But those Daddy's lost the same thing the Mommy's lost, and it is just as hard for them to face days like this without their children.

I wanted to do whatever would bring me the most peace on Mother's Day, and I hope that's what the father's missing their children will decide to do this Sunday.

Virginia's father and I can't be together this Father's Day, but my whole heart is with him.  He's a grieving dad, but mostly importantly he is a dad, her dad, and he deserves to be celebrated this weekend for loving her and missing her the way only a Daddy can.

(in case the video doesn't work in this post, it's here)

never, ever alone.

I saw this postcard tonight on postsecret.

It just breaks my heart.  There are so many Mama's and Daddy's out there missing their babies.  Just know you aren't alone.  I wish none of us were bereaved, but just know, you are never alone.

one day at a time.

I have been much too overwhelmed the past few days.  Everything has seemed much worse all of a sudden.

I think I have been focusing too much on the big picture.  On the fact that she died, that I'll never hold her again, that I have to keep living each day without her.  A grieving parent can't live like that, thinking about the big picture.  It has to be day to day.  One day at a time.

I have to start really focusing on that again.  On making it through one day.  And nothing else.  Just one day.

And my expectations of others is much too high.  To think anyone will ever care about her as much as I do is just never going to happen.  Besides John of course, because he misses her just as much as I do, but besides John no one knew her the way I did.  No one else was her parent.  No one else is her mother.  So to think that people will care as much as me is setting an impossible goal.  And a huge one, and I can't set those.  I can only set goals I can accomplish in a day.  One single day.  I can do one day.

So I am abolishing my expectations.  I hope that everyone that has heard about Virginia loves her.  I hope they all want her to have a legacy of love.  I certainly do.  Maybe I will have some help with that.  Maybe I won't.  But I can't expect everyone to be as passionate as me.  No one else is her mother.

I know part of the reason too I have been overwhelmed is that I cannot sleep.  For a while I had started to again, but now the sleepless nights are back.  I just can't sleep.  Everything always feels worse when I have barely slept in days.  So tonight, I will give in to taking a sleeping aid.  And I'll start tomorrow with a plan for the day--just that day.


"And you don't realize how good you have it
There are things worse than sleepless nights
with cranky infants

There are sleepless nights alone"

Stephanie Paige Cole
(to linger on hot coals)