What life is like right now

I think of Finnian and Maisie every single day, usually for most of the day. So much of the time I feel robbed of my life with them - my thoughts vacillate between dreams of what our time together should have been like and realizations of what our time together was. Despite all this pain, I am full of love. I am full of so much love it makes me feel swollen. 

People have been very supportive for the most part. I am grateful to have wonderful family and a few close friends and colleagues that have given me permission to grieve openly, tearfully, and passionately. Because I am so very grieved. Others are very well meaning - telling us the babies are angels, that we will have future children, and that eventually everything will be okay. For the record, we don't believe the babies are angels; we do believe they are humans and that they went to heaven. Sometimes I wish I could just stop people and tell them to pleeeeeaaassseee work within my belief system when talking to me right now. I'm not always that way; I'm usually more open to hearing what different people think and how that is comforting for them. Just for right now, regardless of what you believe, sit with me in the way that I do, because I'm trying to heal and there are too many voices.

Also, there may be future children, but they won't be these children. These two babies are irreplaceable. My heart may expand, my love may increase, my hope and joy may return ... but it will always be tinged with the sorrow that these two are not there. Please know that my longing for them will not go away, when or if I have another child. You might disagree, you might have more experience than I do, or you might just have a way of seeing the future - but this is my reality: every second of every day I want them. I want their specific DNA, their bodies, their laughter, their tears, their little voices saying my name, their little arms around my neck, and that want is SO big I just cannot imagine it ever changing.

I say their names every day - Finnian and Maisie. I find different ways to work it in. During my pregnancy, I wrote to them in a journal and in the last two weeks I have started to do so again. I don't know how it all works, but I love to imagine them receiving the letters one day. It helps to talk about them and to imagine what they would be like - I always try to connect it to the things I knew about them in utero. Their personalities were different than each other and more apparent each time we saw them. We have many pictures of them too. I look at them every day, just because. I would love to hear you say their names. The sound of them brings joy to my heart and reminds me that they are remembered and cherished. 

Longing and love are the bulk of grief, and the rest is muddled confusion, pain, and deep sadness. There are moments I cry so hard my body wretches uncontrollably and screams escape. Other times silent tears travel down my face or my throat clenches at the simplest mention of babies. If calculated though, these moments don't make up the whole of my day. I do laugh a little everyday. My husband continually makes me smile. Things are not so destroyed inside that my whole life is wrecked. I am re-engaging slowly with work and friends. I'm reading a little and writing a little each day. I'm still making plans. I smile. I shower. I'm still living - not just surviving but actually choosing to engage life.  

That is what life is like right now. I think of Finnian and Maisie every single day, usually for most of the day, and my heart aches with loss and love. I don't have a lot of insight to share at this time... just a glimpse into what life is like 6 1/2 weeks after my sweet twins were born and died. 

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