A New Year

As painful as 2007 has been for me, it is hard to say goodbye. It's as if I am walking further and further away from my daughter, leaving her behind in some place that I am forced to abandon. But in actuality, I've got it all wrong. Fr. Phil, our priest, stated it so well in his homily today: those who die become more fully human, more complete, than we ever knew them to be on earth. They are closer to us, even more so than the people whose hands we can physically touch. As I sit here at my desk, I imagine Bernadette's perfect hand on my shoulder. She is praying for me in my sorrow and knows how much I love her. She watches me sleep, she watches me kiss her father and big brother as we start our day together. She watches Jack get into trouble, she laughs when we laugh, and wipes away the tears that we cry. How beautiful that is! She's as much a part of our family as she would have been if she were alive. She is our patron saint, our intercessor, and I feel so blessed to have her ever present in our lives.

I know this sounds ridiculous, but something I have a hard time with is when someone asks how many children I have. On the way to John Mark's parents' house for Christmas, we stopped at a Waffle House. The woman sitting behind me asked if Jack was our only child. I hesitated, but finally answered "yes". I regretted it as soon as I said it. How dare I leave Bernadette out of our family! The next week, someone in Kroger asked the same question, and I just quietly answered "he's my only living child." Along those same lines (well, not really), I hear a lot of moms who have experienced still births say one of the challenges is having the body of a post partum mother, yet having no baby to show for it. You're leaking milk like crazy, painfully engorged, your abdomen is flabby, and you are 20 lbs heavier. It seems superficial, yet insanely cruel at the same time. I remember taking a shower in the hospital before being discharged, and I refused to look down at my belly. I felt so ugly, knowing the dramatic changes my body had gone through, and it felt like it was all for nothing. So, if you know someone who is going through a still birth or loss of a newborn, make sure you tell her how beautiful she is, despite the rolls of extra skin, the bags under her eyes caused by the sleepless nights, and the gigantic boobs.