More and More

I didn’t think I could miss her more than I already did, but I do. It never occurred to me that Jackson’s presence could make her absence even more pronounced, but it does.

We are in North Carolina, at Ed’s dad’s house for Jackson’s first trip home to visit his extended family and friends who already love him. Somehow I failed to anticipate how difficult this trip might be for me emotionally, but being here with him, without her, has provoked some of the hardest grieving I’ve done in a long while. Just like that first time I put him on the changing table where a much bigger kid used to be, just like that first time I sat with him in the rocking chair in their room and sang “Hark the Sound” to him, it has been incredibly sad bringing him here and doing all the same things we did here with Hudson when she was this age and later, changing his diapers on the counter in the bathroom where he can look at himself in the mirror, nursing him on the sofa, cuddling him in the guest bed to get him to go to sleep, walking down the long gravel road to the house, listening to frogs and looking at ducks and swans. Not only am I reliving all of these precious memories of Hudson, but I’m also thinking (to the extent my imagination can work this far) about all the things she might be doing if she were here with us today. I suppose I should be grateful for the very vivid reminders of our life with her (that is certainly one of many gifts Jackson’s life has brought to us) and hopefully that will come in time, but today, I am just broken, broken, broken by these memories of all the joy that once was. And I am struck again with absolute disbelief that she is gone.

It really does feel like losing her all over again. And it hurts like hell. And this is before we’ve even gotten to her Poppy’s house.

She feels more gone than ever. And I miss her more than ever.