Holidays are hard...

They say "it" gets easier with time; hence, the old saying "time heals all wounds." In my experience with the wounds that are left behind from burying your child, I can say that's both the truth and a lie, and the fact that it's both is a struggle.

The truth of it:

The more time that passes, the less frequent and intense the pain of losing her is. The more time that passes between the agonizing, gut-wrenching, sobbing, empty moments, the more room there is for healing and joy to occur. God lifts me out of the moments when I'm in those pits of grief and allows his healing and gifts and wisdom and so on to be imparted on me.  As the truly hard times become fewer and farther between, I find myself not only experiencing healing and some joy here and there, but also completely immersed in the current happenings of life going on around me (ike moving, developing new friendships, working on Hailey's Hope, family visits, this new pregnancy, and so on). So yes, in this sense, maybe my grief or going on without Hailey is getting "easier" as time goes on.

But it's also a lie:

God and time have healed my wounds, to some extent, and the grief I felt in the initial time of losing her has subsided, for the most part. However, those wounds aren't entirely healed and will never be entirely healed this side of heaven. And while the tears and episodes of grief are less, there are certain aspects of life that are becoming harder. There are too many to list in one post, but the one I am currently dealing with the most right now is that as I continue on with my life without Hailey and as time passes and so on, I feel like she's going further and further away from me. I almost feel like she's disappearing from my life... and I don't want her to.

I know she is in heaven, but I don't want that to mean that who she was here on earth has to disappear or that she can't have a current place in my life. I want who she is to always be a part of me and my life and my family... I always want it to be known that I have a daughter whose name is Hailey... But, like I said, I feel like she's disappearing and like my bond with her is disappearing. Instead of feeling like Hailey's mom, there are many times lately that I feel like we're a young Army couple expecting our first baby. There's no evidence of our first child. A deeper analysis of who we are would eventually tell someone otherwise, but in my day to day activities, I feel like it's hard to keep Hailey with me...

A lot of this "disappearing" feeling is happening because of outward circumstances like the nature of our lives that I mentioned because of our recent move, but it's also happening inside of me... like I'm thinking of her less and less so much so that I'm forgetting her...

Let me try another way of explaining something that I'm beginning to think is perhaps inexplicable.

Lately, it's rare for my thoughts to land on Hailey. Sure I've been keeping plenty busy this week of working on Hailey's Hope, and you'd think that would be enough, that I must be thinking of her while I work on it, but I don't really. I think about the project or task at hand related to Hailey's Hope. I think about the babies and families I'm wanting to help. But am I thinking about my daughter? Not really...

Recently I've been looking forward to my brother and his family coming to visit us this Easter weekend. One of the reasons I'm so excited for the visit is that they have never visited us in our home as a family before. I can't wait to show them our home and to spend time with them because that in itself is so rare! With it being Easter weekend, I've enjoyed planning all the things we're going to do: church on Sunday, cooking an Easter brunch and a traditional Easter dinner, and thinking of all the fun things I can plan to do with my nephew who is two and a half. We have sidewalk chalk and bubbles he can play with. I bought him an Easter basket of goodies teaching him the beginnings of why we celebrate Easter plus the fun stuff like a kite we can fly together. We're going to color Easter eggs and go on an Easter egg hunt. I can't wait to celebrate and do all of these fun Easter activities with my nephew. In a sense, I'm hoping to recreate all of the fun things I remember about my Easters growing up.

So as I was going about my daily activities yesterday with my mind occasionally dreaming of the fun Easter weekend ahead and making sure I have all of the necessary supplies to make it happen, I was taking a break to check Facebook. That's when I stumbled upon a blog post from a fellow baby lost mother about how the holidays are hard and are still hard even though it's been a few years since her daughter passed away. Her post was about how she's going to have two Easter baskets for her kids this year. One for her new son and one for her daughter who passed away. She even detailed what she was putting in her basket for her daughter... bubbles to blow at her grave-site, colorful spring pinwheels to decorate her grave or memorial garden, and so on...

I read the entire post and just sat there, almost in shock, at myself. It felt like it was the first time I'd thought about Hailey and Easter. But it wasn't good.  I'd forgotten about Hailey. I hadn't given a thought to how Hailey could be included in my Easter celebrations.

And then I started to wonder if I was so excited to be planning and doing all of these fun things for my nephew's Easter was because I was replacing her with him... like I was living my dreams of what I would do as Hailey's mom by doing them for my nephew... ? Or even if I wasn't, and I'd be doing this things as his aunt anyway, just thinking about how I can't do them for Hailey was enough to hurt...

In thinking further, I guess I've inadvertently adapted to living without her as though her being in heaven means she can no longer be included in my current life. I never wanted to live like that... but at some point I began to.

And that's when I started to feel like she's really disappearing from my life...

The house she came home to as a newborn and her bedroom are no longer a part of our lives because we moved. Her things are boxed away or put in memory boxes that are kept in closets and our attic. Not having hung all of our pictures from the move, there were only a couple of pictures of her throughout the house. I'd made decorating efforts of having butterflies (our symbol for her) in the yard and inside the house... But they're butterflies and can be thought of only as butterflies and it can be forgotten that they're there to represent her. And the people who met her and knew her are few and far between and are not with us where we currently live. And so, I feel like the "evidence" in our lives that we had a daughter is slowly disappearing as are my thoughts about her...

Not too long ago I wrote a post about wanting a memorial garden for Hailey but my struggles with that... I think that was the beginning of this larger issue I didn't realize I was having.

It's really bothering me lately that we don't live near her grave. Initially, with the whole forgetting about Hailey this Easter, I guess I had thought of her. While out shopping at Walmart for some items for the Easter baskets I've been putting together, I walked by a display of memorial flowers. I saw a pretty one that was in the shape of a cross with purple flowers. I thought to myself that it would be beautiful to put that by Hailey's grave for Easter, and then the realization that I have no way of doing that set in. I thought of buying it and shipping it to someone back home and having them place it there, but gave up on that... even if I could make it work, it wouldn't be the same as me doing it myself and visiting her myself...

More and more I find myself just wanting to go sit by her. On holidays, I want to be able to visit her and decorate her grave. But I can't do those things because we live so far away... And simply put and understated, that makes me sad.

I know some of you reading this might not understand, especially if you believe and know the same as I do, that she is in heaven not needing any of this "stuff." My husband tries to comfort me with these reminders a lot... But really, as much as this is about her, it isn't... It's about me. What about me? I'm her mother, and I'm still here. Even though she's gone, who I am wants to be a mother to her and do motherly things... and if that means decorating her grave on Easter instead of taking her Easter egg hunting because she's gone, that's what it means... But I can't even do that.

And so today has been a reminder of how hard the holidays can be without her and how the "holiday blues" tend to hit fast and hard. They come unexpectedly even though I should learn to expect them. In a way, I welcome the sadness that came with today and these thoughts I just wrote about... only because it makes me really think of her... and sometimes it feels good to miss her like this... it's a reminder of the reality of what she once was/is to me.

However, sometime I hope I learn how to be the mother I want to be to her. Sometime I will write about the memorial garden I made for her, sometime I will write about the time I visited her grave and decorates it for some occasion, sometime I will write about how I thought of this wonderful way of including Hailey in our Easter celebration... Maybe not this year, but sometime... Sometime I'll learn to walk in these shoes of being a babylost mother...