Mother’s Day

I waited most of this day to write, hoping to be inspired to say something profound about Mother’s Day, something about being a motherless daughter and a childless mother on a day that is all about celebrating mothers, something helpful to all my other mama-friends who have lost their children, something uplifting and celebratory. 

But I have nothing profound or uplifting to say. I have little to say at all. Today marks the one-year anniversary of the day Hudson started slipping away from us.

And all I can think about is this:

All I can think about is how I spent most of last Mother’s Day (and the wretched day after) with my girl resting in just this position, sleeping quietly on my chest, hopefully recovering from whatever bug was plaguing her, and how I held her again in this position four days later, just after she died. 

All I can think about is how grateful I am to that amazing little girl who made me a mother, how privileged I am to be her mother, and how lucky I was to be able to mother her so much during the last days she spent at home.

All I can think about are the fateful decisions we made that day and during the next 18 hours, decisions that, if they’d been different, might have meant she’d be with us here today. I spent the last few days hoping that my sweet Jackson might decide to be born today, perhaps granting me some kind of decisive absolution from my two children, an ultimate gesture from the two of them telling me that it is all okay, that I did everything that I could, and that even though it wasn’t enough to save Hudson’s life, I am still a good mommy and will be one again. I know that may seem ridiculous, but that is just where I am today.

It’s Mother’s Day. I miss my little girl. And that’s about all I can say.