Yesterday evening at 7:34 I paused for a moment to mark the time: 3 months exactly since Anja’s birth. The sun was low in the sky, hanging golden over the bay and rippling light across the water. E and R were in the shower together and I could hear them playing tea party, E bossing R and then squealing excitedly over some funny thing he was doing. E and I had been making peanut butter and jam cookies to take to friends’ for tea today and the last batch was in the oven. I stood still in the kitchen, looking out between the buildings at the water and the darkening sky, listening to my little family. Remembering.
At 7:35 the timer on the stove rang. The cookies were done. I took them out to cool on the counter before going into the bathroom to call E out of the shower and get her ready for bed. Turning from what should have been to what is, I said a silent ‘I love you’ to my lost little girl, and laughed with her big sister as I wrapped her tightly in a towel and held her close.
March is for daffodils... 
Commenting here as the next post ‘I can’t sleep’ won’t let me post. If that was intentional, I apologise!
Ah I love that Sublime song. I also remember that feeling, ‘how did I get here? did this really happen to me? to my family? really?!?!’
Something physical happens when they die, I know I felt suddenly older, More hunched, pains in my joints. My skin wrinkled, I went from 29 to 49 overnight. Or that is how it felt. I lost weight, then put on weight. The world just seemed to press down more heavily on my skin sometimes.
And I can only imagined how much you need not to be needed. Just for a little while. Although I had a surviving child she didn’t need me. She needed medical equipment and doctors and nurses but she didn’t need me. And I can’t imagine how I would have felt if I’d had to keep faking okay for an older child, a child at home.
I hope the support group helped a little, I’ve never been. And I should imagine it would be hard to be okay, in a situation so very, very far from that state.