The third 19th

These past few weeks have been so busy that I have been able to keep my mind from wandering into the abysmal thoughts of tomorrow's three year anniversary.  I wonder how it can possibly be three years already - when I feel as though I lost him yesterday.  The pain, when I give any power to it at all, is just as intense and all-consuming as it was in those horrible days in the hospital and that dark and hopeless year that followed.  I still long for him with an aching intensity that sears every fiber of my being - an intensity that is made so much more excruciating by the fact that I know he is gone for good.  This simple fact is still completely unbelievable and impossible for me to wrap my brain around and I am still expecting to find out there's been some terrible mistake....because I can still smell him, and feel inside how being his mother felt.  I can still see him in my minds eye - his smile, his enthusiasm for life, his love for those who loved him.  It just remains a complete nightmare - all waking hours.  It just never goes away.

And at the same time, there is this part of me that has gone on.  It makes me sick to acknowledge it, because part of me thinks that anything less than my death is a complete betrayal of my love for him - like Romeo and Juliet, or Westside Story, or Buttercup's intentions on the night of her marriage to Prince Humperdink.  How can one go on living when their true love has died?  It's almost impossible.  It really is.

But, somewhere you eventually find the strength - and in my case (our case - because this is true for Teddy too) - you fall in love again.  And, don't think for an instant that didn't come with it's own complications - I still sometimes worry that my love for Mo might be seen by Max as a betrayal - since I love him SO completely, so fully, and so exactly just as much as I love/d Max.  And, people always tell me "Well, you feel that way when you have another child.  You always feel like you're betraying the first one."  And, I feel a similar worry with Mo now that Myla is here BUT, you have to believe me, it is different.  I can wrap Mo is my arms and kiss him and tell him that I adore him.  I cannot do that with Max.  You cannot compare the experience of two living children to the experience in which one is dead.  I am sorry but, as much as you want to, you cannot make that comparison.

I guess the point is, that while everything seems to have changed, there is still a core piece of me that will be forever stuck in July 18th of 2011.  The last full day that my child was alive.  The last day that I remember being in complete harmony.  Yes, I had every day stressors - work and money and whatnot - BUT - there was no hole in my heart.  It is the last day that I was ever who I used to be.  It was the last day that Ted and I and our beautiful baby just were.  The next morning, everything changed, and there has been this missing - a missing person, a missing piece, a missing/ a longing - ever since.  Awful.  Unbelievable.  Shocking.  Heartbreaking.  Reality.

I still miss you.  I still love you.  There is no piece of me that isn't still longing to pick you up and love you.  Everything has changed and really nothing has changed at all.