It's Been A Month Already...

It's been a month--almost to the minute--since I've seen and held my baby boy for the first and last time. Every single day I wish for those moments again, the few hours I got to see my son. It seems cruel that those minutes were so short that I count them every week, every "anniversary." I had from 7:11 pm until about 10:35 pm. That's it. Two hundred and forty minutes with my baby... well, with his body. He wasn't really there. Even so, my arms ache to hold him again, even if it is just like the only other time I held him; even if he isn't really there... but I can never get that back.

Nor can I ever feel those kicks, the hiccups, the flutters of his fingers. I will never feel him, ever again. That thought, those realizations, they break my heart.

I don't think this will be a long post... I just need to vent, to let things out, to let them flow out of my mind, through my fingers, and away. But I also don't ever want to forget how I'm feeling right now. I have this curse-slash-blessing thing going where I want to LIVE, to FEEL every moment; to enjoy the good and embrace the bad. I loved every second of being pregnant, and I lived in the moment during the entire thing... and that has been a huge comfort to me in the aftermath of all this crap. But I don't want to run from the pain, to ignore how I feel. I want to embrace that, too, and remember it... partly because it seems like it's part of James, now. Maybe that doesn't make sense, and maybe it's an awful thing to think. But it seems like that sorrow is part of James. Just like that joy of being pregnant was part of him, too. I don't ever want to lose the memories of either the joy or the pain, or I feel like I'll have lost part of James. ...I probably sound crazy right now...

I'm not saying I have to mourn for forever in order to remember James. I certainly don't feel the ecstasy I felt while I was pregnant. I won't have to feel so sad to keep his memory alive. But I don't want to FORGET how I feel, either... and now I'm just saying the same things over and over again.

I miss my baby. Nothing will ever change that. And I'll love him, always. This journey of healing is a long one. Maybe I'll pretend that by embracing the good and the bad I'm really just embracing my little James... holding him close. Because he died, I need to live, to experience. But not just in a passive way. I need to live and experience in an active way.

Does any of this make sense to anyone? Probably not, but I suppose it doesn't really matter. These are just my thoughts, I'm not trying to write for anyone else tonight. Maybe I'll look back in a year and have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about right now, but it's helpful to me in the moment, and that's the most important thing.