Five years.

It's been one year to the DAY since I posted on this blog.  Kinda weird, but not at all surprising the days it strikes me.

Sometime between September 26 and October 5th is when my sweet Logan died.  Most likely it was this weekend sometime, 5 years ago.  FIVE years ago.  I say it every year and it nothing ever changes, other than the number.  It's been HOW long?  I cannot believe so many years have passed since I was told he was gone, delivered him, held his little body and said goodbye.  So many years since my little tiny Ella was placed in my arms only hours later, and the edges of this huge hole that the loss of Logan had left inside of me began to cauterize, albeit agonizingly slowly and unfortunately, never completely.  FIVE YEARS.   Five years ago the doctor said "I can't find baby As heartbeat" and my whole world changed.  Five years ago I lay crumpled (as crumpled as an 8 month pregnant-with-twins woman can be) and sobbing on the floor of the labor and delivery suite bathroom at Texas Womens Hospital telling my husband "I can't do this. I just can't do this" while my friends and motherinlaw sat outside the door, while my parents raced through the night to get to me.
Five years ago that they prepped me to deliver the babies, one dead and one alive. 

I am so grateful for my Ella.  So unbelievably grateful for what she has brought to my life.  She has made me a better person, a more thoughtful person, a more loving person.  She has given me the name "mommy" and changed my whole life (in mind and body and spirit) in ways that I could never fully explain...at least not well enough to show my truly undying gratitude and overwhelming love for this creature given to me....to ME, of all people.   I love her with my whole being, and even more so, if that's possible.  I can look at her and know that she is my purpose, that she is a gift I don't deserve, but that for whatever reason, I was granted anyway.  To love her-to love Ella-is to love a little piece of Gods greatest perfection.  She is so funny and smart and kind and loving.  She cares about me, about my feelings, she cares about animals and their feelings, she cares about the world and whether it's raining enough for the flowers to be able to grow, and whether the squirrel on the road has a mommy or the dog walking down the street has enough to eat.  She is nothing short of amazing.   It is the word I use most to describe her and there really IS no better one to utilize when it comes to her.  It IS my daughter - she IS the word.  Amazing.

And yet, how ungrateful I feel when I am smacked upside my head with grief, when I go to that dark place of sadness inside of  myself, my own personal hell.  How ungrateful am I to feel empty when I, at the same time, know I am SO VERY FULL?  And I am.   I am very. much. full.  But there is a whole other part of me that is completely empty.  While there is one part of me that sees nothing but happiness for the gift that IS my Ella, there is another part of me that sees nothing but the empty space next to her vibrant, bouncing little self.  A space that was meant to be filled with her brother, with my son, my Logan.  I cannot see her playing or dancing, swinging a bat or riding a bike, without seeing that empty place next to her, the place meant for him.  It's insane how an EMPTY space can take up so. much. room. And be SO visible, and so LOUD.

I held him my one and only time when he was a baby, a tiny little 5 lbs. 5 oz. thing.  The life already gone from his little body, his spirit already joined with those before him in heaven.  But he would be a boy now.  A beautiful, maybe smelly, maybe headstrong, maybe blue eyed, maybe green eyed, maybe brown eyed, little boy. I will never know.  I will never know what two TIMES the amazement I have now, would be like.  I have no idea what his strengths would be or what his challenges would be.  What kind of mother to two *I* would even be.  This holds me back even now.  This has held me back for the past 5 years.  We could have used our frozen embryos at any point over the last few years, but I couldn't bring myself to.  A lingering little doubt in my mind whispers "maybe you weren't MEANT to be a mother to two, maybe you couldn't HANDLE it and that's why he's gone".  Oh the number of reasons I have come up with in my head over the years as to WHY it happened.  I couldn't handle two, something was wrong with him and therefore he left before he ever began, something WILL be wrong with Ella and therefore I am to focus my whole self on her before I lose her too, something is wrong with ME and it will happen again were I to try to have another baby.   Of course I am also just plain scared.  Good old sheer terror consumes me when it comes to trying again.  The places the mind can go can only be understood by someone who has walked this long and sometimes VERY desolate road.  

I wish more than anything (besides wishing him HERE) that people could understand.  When you carry two, and you plan for two, and you decorate a nursery for two, and buy clothes for two and dream for two and you name and sing and TALK to two and then you only come home with one?  When the other one is yanked so viciously and so suddenly from your life and dreams? You can only crumble and break.  You can only wonder why.  What was the purpose?  What is the larger picture, the larger meaning?    I don't know if there is one. I really don't.  Maybe there's not. Maybe it just happened.  Sh*t happens, right?  Maybe that's all it is.  But why still? Why me and not someone else?   Why are there such WORTHLESS mothers out there who have ALL of their children and I am deprived of one of mine?  One can't help but consider that there is something wrong with ones SELF in that instance.  I have considered it, and punished myself repeatedly for it (whether justified or not) over and over again. 


So where to go from here.  I don't know.  Oh I will survive October 5th and 6th 2013, just like I have survived October 5th and 6th in 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009 and even 2008.  I will move forward and everyone else might remember him on that day if I post about it on facebook or I cry in a text or on the phone, but me?  His mother who loves him beyond what words can describe?  I will remember him EVERY day.  I will carry my sweet, perfect, beautiful little boy in my heart forever.  For ever and for always my baby he'll be. 

A slideshow I put together not long after losing Logan, about my journey.....,


The journey, to and of, my babies.....