Sunday, July 09, 2006
Nova's been gone for a little over 3 months now. Pretty soon we'll reach the point that he'll be gone longer than he was alive. He's already been gone longer than we had him at home. 3 months and I still cry every day. I get up and do the laundry and make dinner and I buy gifts and plan birthday parties (Terra turned 3 today) I bathe kids, and redesign blog templates and I sell books and I do fundraising, and I write poetry and I do 90% of it on auto-pilot, just waiting for this time of night, when they all go to bed.
Then, I look at Nova's pictures, the ones I took while he was home, before he had a scar down his chest, before his stomach was laid open, before he had a colostomy and a tube taped to his face... I didn't see his face without that tube for 45 days before he died, with the exception of the time he was temporarily and unsuccessfully extubated. While he was in the hospital I kept saying how I missed
seeing him, and how I couldn't wait until he was off the vent permanently. I just kept telling myself that he needed the ventilator, that I'd see his beautiful face when he was better, stronger, healthier.
I was wrong. I only saw his face, his whole face, untaped and untubed and bare, as he died in my arms, and I will never see it again - so I study the pictures, pictures of the face that was stolen from me by CHD even before he was - and I cry, and I miss him, and sometimes I still sleep with his bear, and yes, even three months and 2 days later, I want him back.
I just want my baby. Doesn't seem like too much for a mother to ask for, but it's the one thing I'll never have.
posted by Erin @
12:31 AM
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