Quiet Ramblings

I realize I have been quiet on the blog this year.  Months and months have passed since I have written.  Another birthday for Elena has come and gone.  Her due date approaches rapidly.

This has been a difficult year.  2014 ended tragically (see previous post about my brother-in-law's unexpected death).  2015 began the same, with news in the wee hours of the first day of the year that our dear friends had just lost their baby girl.  So much heaviness, so many questions unanswered.  It seems so senseless.  Innocent lives snatched away so early and so suddenly.  Yet the world keeps spinning.

And for most of us, life continues.  Perhaps not the life we envisioned, for we never dreamed we would live with such gaping wounds; but life continues nonetheless.  We somehow continue despite the earth shaking changes.  We stumble our way into a new normal, probably always yearning for what would have been, but eventually accepting, to some degree or other, what simply is.  We emerge from the overwhelming darkness, blinking and squinting in the sometimes painful light, gradually beginning a new path.  And new life begins.

I am lucky.  In His infinite grace and mercy, God has shared so many gifts with me.  While this year has had great difficulties, it has also brought rich blessings.  Elena is a big sister again.  Another little boy has joined our family.

He is too young to understand having a sister in heaven, but he already hears her name.  It is spoken in our home.  My Sunshine has outgrown his babyish way of saying her name - Uh-YAY-nuh - and now speaks it clearly.  My Rainbow, still working on his articulation, pronounces it WAY-nuh, and usually insists that she is his "MY WAY-nuh." (I suppose that possessiveness goes with the territory of being a toddler.)  I wonder how my little Pot of Gold will eventually say her name.  Will the two little boys include her in their family drawings for school and correct me if I fail to mention her to strangers like her big brother does?  As my oldest was the only sibling to meet her, I wonder if his connection to her will always be stronger.

So many questions.  So much change.  And so much quiet despite the constant sounds of a house full of boys.  I feel like there is some deep knowledge I should have gained over the last four plus years.  Elena's death was such a significantly profound event that surely I should have some significantly profound wisdom as a result of my experience; yet I feel I have nothing new to say or write.

I feel like I am mostly in a place of acceptance now, not "over it" or okay with it but able to live with it as it is what is, yet I still ache for her.  I still struggle with the guilt of happiness.  And with the guilt of that guilt.  It feels wrong to be happy when my darling daughter is dead.  It feels wrong to be sad when my beautiful sons are alive.  It feels like a delicate dance, balancing the joy and the sorrow, the celebration and the mourning.  And to be honest, I have two left feet, no rhythm or coordination.  I am not at all competent at the dance.  I stumble more than anything.  And I feel that I am a broken record, writing variations of the same each time I come to the blog.

I have remained quiet this year, waiting for adequate words to articulate something meaningful.  I suspect they are not coming.  So I am left with writing things that are wholly inadequate.  And yet I still need to write them...for her, for me.  I ache to mother her.  This is one of the few ways in which I feel I can, and so here I am.

Here I am, my sweet daughter, offering you all I know how.  Here am I, inadequate with insufficient gifts.  I am sorry I cannot give you more.