This is probably the hardest post to write. It is about moving on. I didn't say forgetting. There will NEVER be forgetting. As time passes, it gets harder to remember how she felt or smelled, how heavy she was. But I will never forget her. Every so often those memories come back and hit you and it is like yesterday. Though now those days are getting fewer, the pain easier to deal with. I am moving on, not forgetting.
I have seen other ladies who have lost their little ones. Some have done as I have and moved on with life, there are new jobs, new babies, sometimes just new everyday life events. I would never say to any of those women, how could you? What about the baby you lost? Because I understand. You can't stand in the shadows grieving forever. If I continued to do so, it would be cheating my son and my husband and my family and myself. I still speak of Ashlyn, as I would my son. I remember her. I talk about her, even when no one else will. She is my daughter. She will always be my daughter. But I can't live in the past forever.
I have seen a few women who can't let go. Who hang onto that memory. They are stuck in that awful time of loss. They are angry. They are afraid. Sometimes even I think to myself, this is not right. They need to move on but I would never say that to them. I may say it to myself, or my husband but I would never say it to them. To do so would be cruel, like kicking a man when he's down. Everyone grieves in their own time and way. Do I think that they might be putting a kink in the lives of their children? Maybe. That what could be a morbid preoccupation with the child who has passed on, screw up a sibling's psyche? Possibly. Only time will tell. But for those who are still in that dark, awful, cruel place comfort is what they need. A shoulder to cry on. Support. Not criticism for not moving on when we think they should. Nor do they need preaching of any sort from any religion. Your faith may not help them. It may only cause more pain. They need to find their own path, in their own time and way.
Perhaps I had it easier in some ways because I had always thought from the moment I saw those two pink lines on the pregnancy test that my time with Ashlyn was limited. I never thought I would actually carry her to term so the days I did have were so precious. I had been preparing to let her go from the beginning, so maybe I was more prepared than some for the end. Did I expect her to die the way she did? Hell no. By that time, I had been told repeatedly that she would live and everything would be fine. It wasn't. But still there had been that prior planning. A sort of foreknowledge that things would not work out that most mothers never feel.
So, as you likely may have guessed from the fact that posts have become fewer and fewer, this blog is slowly winding down. It has served its purpose for me. I may post from time to time about some insight I have gained but I have survived. In those first days, I was not so sure I would. The pain cut and I bled grief and even when people said that it would pass and become easier, I didn't believe them.
But it did. I survived. My son survived. He is marked by what happened. He won't forget but he survived. My marriage survived. Many don't but mine did. I accepted my husband as he was at that time and he accepted me. We talked - a lot. It helped. Maybe the purpose of this blog in the end was for this. To show that you can survive and move on. That life continues, maybe a little emptier, with a hole but it does continue.
Just remember that hole is filled with love and love never dies.
