Fresh pain

Today it feels like Zion just died. The pain is so strong again- the desire to hold him, to have him be here. I miss him so terribly I don't even know what to do, how to respond, how to pray. Yesterday, I felt like he was already becoming a distant memory and it didn't feel right. It's been less than a week- Scotty and I both felt like it had been a long time ago that he was with us. It was as if I needed to feel the freshness of the sadness again to somehow validate the fact that I still feel that void. I spent some time looking at pictures of Zion and I wept. Despite the tubes, he looked so alive and I so distinctly remember holding his hands and feeling his warm chest and watching his heart beat so closely under the surface. I had nothing to say to God except, "I want my son back." I was comforted by the words of a friend who has suffered a similar loss and sometimes heard the Lord say to her, "I lost a child, too. And I am grieving with you." Because I fully believe that our baby didn't die by chance but at the hand of an all-wise God, I forget that my Father's decision wasn't a cold one. He grieves when His children grieve. It's so hard to understand the plans of the Lord, that they include pain and suffering and even sin, but are ultimately the most loving for us. Without realizing it, sometimes in my pain, I forget that God loves me and hurts when I hurt.

Scotty and I both have felt this need to tell perfect strangers or people we are talking to that our son just died. I think I need people to know that he existed. I want people to know that he was strong- that he fought for 18 days. I want people to know that he was beautiful and perfect and sweet and a fighter. That he had blue-grey eyes like Natty when she was born. That he had long, delicate fingers and tiny fingernails and big feet. Scotty said he had a big nose but I think he would have grown into it. Sometimes he would grip my finger in his hand and he was strong. His hair was soft and he didn't have any eyebrows or eyelashes. He is my son and will always be and it's so hard to carry that with you when you have no way to show it. Even now my body continues to produce milk and I have the lingering discomfort of a surgery that took this baby from my body. But there's no baby to show for it. I have baby weight that hangs around my middle. But no baby to show for it. It feels wrong to continue life "as normal"- everything in me wants to keep the memory of my son alive...