I Love. . .

. . . that you just saw a picture of your big sister on my computer and you said, "Hudson!" 

Seventeen Months

Jackson is seventeen months old today. Seventeen months. In just nine more days, he’ll have lived as long as Hudson lived before she was diagnosed with an ultimately fatal illness. In just twelve more days, he’ll have lived as long as Hudson lived. In just thirteen more days, he’ll have lived longer than she ever did. I feel almost as though I am on a precipice, bracing myself for the inevitable fall over the edge, into an unknown that should be a known, into the rest of Jackson’s life, into the rest of my life without Hudson.

This election season has filled me with such nostalgia—at this time four years ago, we were eagerly awaiting Hudson’s birth in six or seven weeks. We met the future vice president and he rubbed my belly for good luck and told me that having a child was the greatest thing in the world. I dreamed about the day when I would get to tell that child the story of how he or she had brought good luck to Barack Obama and Joe Biden in a historic election. On Election Day, we drove home late in the evening from our voter protection post in Richmond, listening to the radio for news of the results, getting chills when our home state of North Carolina turned blue, rejoicing when it became clear that our guy had won.

That was four years ago. Four years. And yet I remember it like it was just yesterday. It seems like it was just yesterday. For the first time, I think, I am starting to get a real sense of the passage of time. Hudson has been part of our lives for more than half the time Ed and I have known each other, yet she lived here with us for only seventeen months and twelve days of that time. This is now our third fall without her. The third Christmas approaches. I see pictures of babies born long after her who are now turning three. I wrote an email today in which I noted that I left my law firm almost three years ago—this wouldn’t be striking, except that I left my law firm only five months before Hudson died. Which means she has been gone for two-and-a-half years. As if I only just realized that when writing about something wholly other.

And more than anything, now her little brother, our precious Jackson, another light of our lives, born an entire year after she died, is now almost as old as she was when she died.  And yet he is still so very little.  He is still so very young.  Our time with him has only just begun.  Only now have I really begun to understand how very short our time with Hudson was. 

And just as Hudson did, Jackson delights us at every turn with his huge grin, his friendly “Hi!,” his sweet kisses, his love of books, his ever-expanding vocabulary, his silly sense of humor, his Elvis-impersonating dance moves, his contagious giggle, his engulfing belly laugh.  He reminds me of her in so many ways, but when I try to remember what this time in Hudson’s life was like, this time in the last month before she died, I can conjure so little in my head that exists separately from a photo (photos we have shockingly few of from those last several weeks of her life). I can vividly recall the last interaction we had with her before she woke up very sick early that Monday morning. A few hours before that, about 11PM or so, after a day of rising and falling temperatures, she’d woken up again with a fever, and after giving her some medicine, we brought her into bed with us to make sure that her temp went down and that she was feeling better. At some point, she sat up in the bed between us, chatting in much the same way that Jackson chatters now, clearly saying something that is just beyond our understanding as mere adults, smiling and playing with the wooden spindles in the headboard above us. I remember smiling and saying, “OK, I think it’s time to go back to bed now,” and putting her down with every belief that she was totally fine and would wake up in the morning back to her old self. But less than 24 hours later, I was crying over her in a bed in the ICU, and 24 hours after that, she was, as far as we know, already brain-dead.

Until now, my only understanding of what we have been missing without her has come from watching the other babies her age grow older, from watching the interactions between her peers and all of their younger siblings, and from my own imagination, as I try to picture in my mind what she would be like if she were here, what our lives would be like if she were here. An almost four-year-old with thousands of words and a sophisticated understanding of how to put them together. A lean, gangly, long-haired girl where there was once a round-faced toddler with a baby mullet. Two kids to wrangle at the grocery store. Two kids to drop off in two different rooms at school every day. Two kids to make peace between in the back seat of the car. Two kids to watch grow up together, play together, make each other laugh, play jokes on each other and on us.  There is so very much we haven’t experienced that we should have experienced.  

Until now, I have had only a sense of what we have been missing, like the blurred background of a photo. But on Election Day, Jackson will wake up to his 530th day, a day that Hudson never saw. And from that day on, we will know, in sharp relief, perhaps really only for the first time, what we have been missing.

I Love...

... how you always announce it when you burp. "Bup!"

(So far behind on these... life is slowing down a bit on my end, so I' hoping to be back here more often from now on.) 

Fifteen Months

I am still here.  It is hard to believe how long it has been since I last wrote in any depth.  I have so much to write about, so much to say, so much clattering around in the cobwebby corners of my mind.  I will be back regularly soon, I hope. 

But for today, I needed to mark another milestone in this journey of life without Hudson.  I took Jackson in for his 15-month well visit today.  The 15-month well visit was the last regular visit Hudson made to the doctor before she got sick.  Her 18-month visit was scheduled for three weeks after she died. 

What is also becoming clearer with each passing day is that there is no escaping the reality that Jackson will soon be older than Hudson ever got to be.  Of course, there is nothing I want more than for him to grow and flourish and live to be a very old man.  But once he lives past 17 months and 12 days, he will have lived Hudson's entire lifetime.  Every moment beyond that is a moment we did not get with her.  It makes every moment with him, both now and then, ever more precious.  But as much as every one of those moments is a reminder of all that we have, every one of those moments is also a reminder of all that we have lost.  Much of the deep sense of grief I have been moving through this summer has come from the fact that Jackson has rapidly been growing into a little person very much like the little person that we lost when Hudson died.  Just as she was on the brink of bursting fully into herself, so is he now.  Just as she charmed us daily with her mannerisms, her words, her animal noises, her contagious smiles, her loving little self, so does Jackson.  More times than I can count, I am quickly brought to tears in the very moments where I am smiling and laughing hardest with him.  

A reader once commented that it was a good thing that I am able to enjoy moments with Jackson in ways that are just his, that he deserves his own life.  Of course he does.  He also deserves to have a big sister here on earth with him.  We deserve to have both of our children living.  All of us deserve many things we do not get.  Life is not fair.  Jackson does deserve his own life, but his life just happens to be one in which his older sister, his parents' first child, died before he was born.  This fact will shape all of our lives forever.  It does not mean that our grief will overshadow the joy he brings us.  It does not mean that Jackson will be forced to live in Hudson's shadow, never his own person.  What it does mean is that she will always be our first child, she will always be Jackson's big sister, we will always miss her, and we will all keep learning to live with our grief beside our joy.  The grief does not make our joy any less.  If anything, it enlarges our joy.  I am learning to accept that the tears may often come in those moments of joy, but the tears don't have to detract from those moments.  Instead, they can simply offer a more beautiful reflection of the joy than could ever have been possible without them. 



  

I Love...

... how you greet every person you see with a giant grin and a cheerful "Hi!" Including Daddy and me when you haven't seen us all day. And I also love how you say "Hi!" when you wake up from sleeping. 

I Love...

... when you've been walking up a storm, and then I put shoes on you for the first time and you just stand there frozen like you have no idea what's happened. And then you start high-stepping.  Hilarious.

Tunnel Vision

I am still here.  On top of a long to-do list as I prepare for a big TNT fundraiser in August and for starting my new job soon after that, chemo has just really been knocking me out for the last few weeks.  The doctor warned me that the fatigue would get progressively worse, and he was right.  But I just keep trying to remember that there is a light at the end of the tunnel for me, at least as far as cancer is concerned.

I have also just been missing my girl so very much.  I want to write more. I have so much to say. But for now, I am struggling yet again with the reality that there is no light at the end of this particular tunnel.  I miss her.  I want my little girl.  I want my son to have his big sister.  I want my old life back.  I would take countless rounds with cancer if I could just have her back.      

A fellow bereaved mom shared this on Facebook tonight, and it spoke to me.  Partly because I need reminding that I have already made it "through" a lot of dark tunnels, partly because I need reminding that I have what it takes for the ones that remain ahead.  But mostly it spoke to me today because it reminded me that sometimes, in some ways, there is no "through." God, I miss my child.