One year.

Last Thursday, June 27th, marked one  year since I lost my son, Eli. I couldn't believe it had been a year. It felt so long and continuous, like it had to have been longer. But no, just a year, and I spent the day hurting - both emotionally and physically. My body literally ached. My arms ached to hold the son I never got to meet.

My husband and I have struggled on how to not exactly celebrate but to honor our babies births/passings. It is not your typical birthday. It is also the day that your child has died. How do you celebrate the life you created yet mourn what has been taken from you so unfairly? Last year, at Harper's one year, we bought a pink balloon and wrote messages on it and released it into the sky. So, we decided to do the same for Eli this year. We bought him a blue balloon. The woman who filled the balloon at the grocery store was so nosey about why we needed a balloon. She kept saying things like, "Who's it for?" "What's the occasion?" "Do you need a special message on the balloon?" I was like, holy crap, lady, mind your own business. I told her it was for someone special. And I left it at that. I didn't feel like getting into an awkward conversation because I'll most likely over explain and then it would be weird.

I wrote on the balloon and signed it, "Love, Mommy". I watched my husband write, "Love, Dad' and it broke my heart into a million pieces. I admit, I don't often think of my husband as a father because we have no living children. But he is, he is a father, and he is a wonderful one. He loves our son and daughter with the deepest love he could possibly have. We went outside and it was a beautiful evening. We held hands and we counted to three and we let the balloon go together. I watched the balloon float up and away and it is such a simple yet symbolic gesture that I cried. My husband held me and kept saying, "I can still see it, it's way up there now." And we kept looking out towards the sky, watching, straining our eyes for the symbol of our son's life, barely visible through the clouds.

What has been hurting me a lot lately is that people often forget that I am a mother. I was pregnant and I carried my babies inside of me for twenty weeks until my weak cervix gave out and failed us. But because my babies are not living on this earth, I am considered childless and I am not a mother to most. And it's the littlest things, the smallest comments that set me off. I had to fill out a survey at work for my boss and it asked about who lived in your home and how many kids you had or didn't have. He needed different types of living situations so he asked me to fill one out. But it was the way he said it. He said, "Here, you can fill one of these out for us. You don't have any kids. So it probably won't take you too long to fill it out." And I just say, "yeah, okay.." and my mind is screaming, "Yes, yes I do have children!" But I can't say that. I can't say anything. Because nobody knows what to say to that.

I sometimes wish if I'll ever feel normal, if I'll ever get to experience the things other mothers do. When I hear a woman complain about her kids, or how she can't wait to escape her house for the day to get away from the kids, I want to shake her and tell her how lucky she is, how she shouldn't take her life for granted. She is lucky her children got to be born alive, got to live, and that she has them in her life to hold, kiss and cuddle. She is lucky that she can celebrate birthdays, can tuck them in at night, and hold them tight. I want to scream at that woman and tell her to count her lucky stars that she is getting to experience that. Her babies are alive and can drive her crazy and I would give anything up to have that. Anything.