Still losing
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I should be celebrating. Everything I set out to achieve in her name is finally starting to come to fruition. We had win, after win, after win in the past couple weeks. We are making enormous strides.
So why do I feel like I’m still losing?
Heart inexplicably panging, I turn on the radio as I hit the shower. The water courses down my shoulders, rinsing the satisfied smile from my face, spiraling right down the drain. And then the words dance over the splashes to remind me:
You were bigger than the whole sky
You were more than just a short time
And I've got a lot to pine about
I've got a lot to live without
I'm never gonna meet
What could've been, would've been
What should've been you
And that’s it right there. I still feel like I’m losing because I have already lost the biggest, most important battle. And I’ve got a lot to live without.
There is no escaping it. There is no making it better. This is what it will come always come back to.
I’m never going to hold her again. I’m never going to meet her. I’m never going to see her grow up.
Because no matter how many future stillbirths my daughter’s life might contribute to averting, she will always be dead. She is not coming back.
Every single thing to come has turned into ashes.
And this is the part that only another loss parent can ever understand: That no matter how much joy you find, no matter how much pain you channel into change, no matter how much love you find in their siblings or in the incredible friends they have brought to your life, it is never enough. It can never be enough.
She is not replaceable. The hole she has left cannot be filled. And nothing is ever going to change that.
After nearly a decade of learning to swallow this bitter truth, day by painstaking day, one would think it wouldn’t come as a surprise anymore.
And yet, the pain is always there. And when I let myself really feel it again – that ache, that sting, that stabbing, twisting emptiness – it still leaves me breathless.
Because she was bigger than the whole sky. And then it all came crumbling down.
And there is no way to ever put it back.
There is no way to put it back. They are not replaceable. What do you do when this realization hits afresh?