Lately when I think of Hailey my mind takes me back to her birth and how nothing went as planned or imagined. My mind goes back to being separated from her the night she was born to rushing to get out of the birthing center and driving to see her in the NICU in Birmingham. My mind goes back to conversations with nurses and doctors about surgeries, blood transfusions, apnea, and so on. My mind goes back to the bombshell dropped on us unexpectedly. Trisomy 18. Fatal. My mind goes back to all the decisions we had to make that we never planned or imagined we'd have to make. My mind goes back to all of the moments I watched her and wondered if that would be her last. My mind goes back to the oxygen tanks, nasal cannulas, feeding tubes, morphine, bandages, and everything else that went into providing for her at home. My mind goes back to how I took hit after hit after hit of unexpected news, shocking news, bad news. My mind goes back to how my life was turned around and around and around...
My mind hasn't visited those moments in a long time. My mind defaults to the good moments, to the goodness in it all. It filters through the bad, the tragic, the painful, and focuses on the good. It clings to the moments that bring joy, peace, comfort, love, and blessings. Until lately.
Lately mind goes back to the other moments, but it can't stay there. It shuffles through the moments and memories staying only long enough for a glimpse, and a glimpse is all it takes. My mind can't stay in those difficult, tragic moments long enough to relive them. Because I can't bare it another time. It's as though I might collapse into nothing if I replay one full "dark" moment.
So as I shuffle through the dark moments I hit play, fast forward, play, fast forward, I can barely stand it without crying. All I think and wonder is, "How did I do it?" I can't even replay it in my mind half a year later. How did I ever live through it? How did I managed to wake up every day let alone find happiness and reason to smile and be joyful?
I look back at those two months of my life, the month with her and the first month without, and I think I'm finally seeing it how most others saw it. If I think back on those two months and imagine it not happening to myself but to a friend or family member, my heart breaks in a different way. I would be devastated in a different way, and it's almost worse for me to imagine it as happening to another person, but it didn't happen to another person. It happened to me.
All I can think about lately is how in the world did I get through it? How did I smile? How was I strong? How am I still standing now? As I write and think about these things I can't hold the tears back anymore. I want to say I honestly have no idea how I did it.
But I can't say I have no idea how I did it because I know my answer.
God.
I have those thoughts quite a few times, too. Somedays it doesn't even seem real. Those decisions we had to make - how on Earth did we make them? When the doctors told us MJ was not going to make it we had a decision to hold him for the first and last time, or let him pass on his own. My husband clammed up and simply could not decide to take MJ off of life support so we could hold him. I had to make that choice for us. How I did it I will never know, but I am so thankful that God gave me the strength to hold MJ while he was alive and not let him pass on his own because we were too scared.
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