Day 22

In high school I wrote in my journal every night. I considered it one of my greatest accomplishments that I had such a detailed chronicle of my teenage years. When I went to college, my writing became more and more sporadic – probably because my days were much less structured. I still try to get a few notes in every few months, and especially to avoid only writing when things are hard. I don’t want it to seem like my life is altogether terrible.

Lately I’ve been doing a lot more writing, mainly so I can see how my feelings have developed over the past few weeks. Yesterday and today have been really hard for me, particularly at night, and rather than sobbing and wailing (the kids were asleep, so I stuck to silently sobbing), I wanted to put things into words.

But as soon as I wrote the date I thought, 16 days left. Just 16 days. What can I do in 16 days? How can I actually get ready for this? How will I convince myself to get in the car to drive to the hospital in 16 days, knowing I’ll go home that night without Tiny Baby? How do I function for the next two weeks? How will I manage afterwards when I’m barely keeping it together now?

Day 18

I’ve learned to avoid being home alone. The last few days have been hard, so with Evan staying at his cousins’ and June over at a friend’s house this morning, I knew I needed to go do something. I got some spring/summer clothes for the kids, and tried to ignore some really great deals on maternity clothing. (The deals weren’t quite good enough that I could get away with only using the clothes for the next month.)

Then I thought about having lunch by myself at Ikea. Instead, I talked Jarom into a lunch date (not at Ikea) and we tried to not talk about the baby. Or the burial. Or the expenses. Or the sadness. We laughed about our less-than-stellar waiter, eavesdropped on the conversations around us, tried to figure out what we’d add to the soup to make it more palatable. It’s nice to suffer together and to be funny together.

When I got home, I decided to read in our hammock-chair-swing. I finished a book yesterday (Mr. Penumbra’s 24-hour Bookstore) and was browsing through the daily deals on my Kindle. For whatever reason I chose Angela’s Ashes. It was making me feel better about my life, but when a second child died I thought maybe I’d better move on to something else.

Today has been better than yesterday, overall, which is a gift in its own right. We have another appointment to check Tiny Baby’s heartbeat tomorrow. I’m not worried like I was last week. There’s a lot going on in the next few days and I hope the busyness keeps me distracted.

Plus, when I showed June the new clothes I bought her, she was adorable. Every time I pulled a shirt out of the bag, her jaw dropped and she exclaimed, “For ME?!? I love it!! Is it for my birthday?”

I love my kids.