Six and a half years later

I don't have a real purpose for this post. It's mostly disjointed rambling. But I guess that's how my thoughts are. Still. Six and a half years later. It still doesn't make sense. It's not nice and neat. It still sucks. The words and feelings still get stirred up and start to bubble out of me and I don't know what to do with them. So here they are --

I hate being in this club. This club that no one should ever have to be in. And even more, I hate when women I know are thrust into this club. I hate telling them that I am thinking of them. I hate knowing that their life is forever changed and that there will now be "the new normal" for them.

A woman that I went to high school with recently lost her son to SIDS. I wish I knew what to say to her. I wish I could give her peace. I wish I could let her know that it's okay to feel whatever she feels; that it's okay to cry and that it's okay to smile, and that just because she has good moments doesn't mean that she loves her son less. But I don't know how. We're all in this awful club together and yet I feel distant. I wish that I didn't. And I'm sorry that I do.

I wish I was better about being more open. I don't feel like I'm closed off. I don't feel like I shirk away from talking about Maggie. But six and a half years later, it's not really any easier. It might even be harder. I'm living in NYC and far too often I hear "one day you'll see" and "just wait until it happens to you" -- I cringe and keep quiet. They don't know. They don't know her. They don't mean to cause this pain.

I know that Maggie is not forgotten. I know that she touched so many lives in so many ways. Ways that I will probably never know. But it hurts to realize that when I meet new people, they don't know her. They don't know that my daughter had the cutest button nose and the most perfect cupid's bow. They don't know that this year she'd be in first grade. (First grade?! Is that right? Time is a strange thing.)

I wondered how long it would be, and for a time it felt like there was no way it was ever going to happen again, but it's finally creeping in, slowly but surely -- the yearning to have another baby. People ask me if I am scared; scared that my next baby will be like Maggie. I am scared, but not for that reason. I'm scared because I worry that Maggie will be overshadowed. That people will forget that I was already a mother before this next new baby. That my heart has already been full of love for a child growing inside me. I don't want them to forget. I don't want ME to forget.

I never know how to end these posts....it doesn't seem possible. The thoughts and feelings are all still there so it's weird to find a tidy stopping point.

So I'll leave it with these ellipses since that's really the best way to describe it all.

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