I’ve been keeping myself extra busy the last few weeks. Right after surgery up until yesterday I was waking up early, starting on projects, going all day. I’d have music or a podcast on while I worked, which is unusual for me, I enjoy quiet when I work. I had about 15 tabs open on my laptop at one point working on the middle school band’s spring trip, planning a veggie garden for the spring, ordering birthday presents for friends, planning a fall trip for us, getting a jump start on all Jackson’s travels for TSA this school year, planning spirit wear, writing cards to friends, charting my pain levels, and basically saying yes to anything that was thrown my way. At first I thought maybe I’m just spinning to keep myself mentally busy to combat my lack of physical ability during this time of healing, then yesterday I saw the date: August 24th and I realized why I was doing what I was doing.

Today would be my daughter’s 11th birthday. She’d be in fifth grade, maybe sixth grade, depending on when she was allowed to start kindergarten. She’d probably be a dirty blond with a penchant for video games like her brother, or maybe she’d hate video games because that is his thing. Maybe she’d be into science and math, or more likely she’d be like me, writing little stories, doing art, reading late into the night with a flashlight under her blankets thinking we wouldn’t know. I know she’d be smart, and early reader like her big brother. Kind, compassionate, maybe a little shy, letting Jackson be the leader he was born to be.

Those are the thoughts that seep into my concious every year around this time. The idea of who my daughter would be if she were here with me. And every year I try desperately to combat those thoughts, but I am never successful.

My best friend sent us the text she sends every year. The one to say she is thinking of us and of Lydia. Her son’s birthday is tomorrow and so in her head our two children are intrinsically linked. Late August babies. Wanted children. Loved always.

God, it’s a tough day for me. I try each year to spread a little light today, but this year is hard. I’m still on crutches and I’m still in a headspace that makes finding the hope harder. It feels all at once like the only day I can publicly remember her and the hardest day of the year to get through the memory of her. It’s a bad kind of feeling. A stuck kind of feeling.

I’ll choose kindness toward myself today to combat it. I’ll stay in bed longer. I’ll watch “I Love Lucy” and take my time. I’ll turn off the to-do list and the music and the ringer on my phone and I’ll sit in silence for a little bit. Then tonight I’ll hug my baby, I’ll send a gift to my best friend’s son celebrating another year around this wild world. I’ll call my Momma. I’ll make my donations to Trisomy 18 and Planned Parenthood. Slowly I’ll feel better. Slowly I’ll figure this out. Eleven years doesn’t feel so long and it never gets easier. I think we just learn to live with the grief, because what else can you do.

I hope you are learning to live with your grief today. I hope the memories you have suffice, and if not, if the memories are all tough for you like they are for me, I hope you can make sense of the nonsensical in a way that helps others, shines some light, and makes hope float.

I hope Lydia Elizabeth knows I love her, wherever she is, and I hope she knows I made the best decision I could with the information that I had. And I hope she forgives me. And I hope one day I can forgive myself.

Be nice to people, y’all. You just never know.

M.