When we first lost Harper, we brought her home in a pink urn. It was not the homecoming i had in mind and I felt like my heart had been ripped out of my chest. On the ride home from the funeral home, my arms ached to feel her warm, squirming body, but instead I held a box with an urn inside it. I could barely look at it. It felt so unreal to me. My baby was inside this little box, the baby I knew was inside my belly only a week ago. I was so overcome with disbelief and sadness, that we placed her in the room we designated her nursery. It took a lot of courage to even go in that room, let alone be faced with her urn. I know this sounds strange. Why wouldn't I want to talk to her each day, be in that room with her ashes? Because it was a reminder that she was not alive. She had died. And I couldn't face it. So I shut the door for a long time. A few months later, we opened the door and I even went in the room and talked to her a few times. I listened to Florence & the Machine loudly and cried my eyes out (some of her songs absolutely rip my heart out, they're so haunting and emotional.. I must have played that album for four months straight).
When we started trying to conceive again, and we got pregnant again, I felt it were a little easier to walk by that room with the door open and not be overwhelmed with grief. Until we got pregnant and lost Eli, again at that 20 week mark. I knew it was happening all over again. We went to the same funeral home and brought our son home in a matching blue urn. I stared down at the box in my hands and felt the most helpless I had ever felt. Almost as if it were happening to somebody else. This had already happened once. It wasn't supposed to happen again. But it did. And it was. We placed his urn next to hers and I cried and felt hopeless and like it wasn't my life. It wasn't real. The nursery became a sad, avoided room in the house. Almost my own mini graveyard which I had to walk by each day.
I couldn't handle it and made my husband turn the room into a guest room. We bought a bed and night stand. We put all the baby related items and gifts that never got used in boxes in the basement. In a fit of crazy rage, I pulled all my maternity jeans and clothes off their hangers (I had kept them up after that first loss when we had hope for a successful second try) and threw them into the hallway. I told my husband to pack them up and get them out of my sight.
But where would the urns go? If it wasn't their room anymore, where could we put them? I was still too fragile to look at them every day, it only reminded me of what we had lost. So in a random moment, we put them on a shelf in another spare room where the computer is. I never felt happy with this, but I didn't know what else to do. I hardly went into that room so it wouldn't be too hard on me. And I didn't have to walk by it each day. But I also didn't want them to feel forgotten, if that makes sense. It was such an odd feeling. What do you do?
So they stayed up there for awhile. Until this past Tuesday. My husband and I were sitting on the couch and we were going to light candles in a few hours. I said to him, "I think we should have Harper and Eli in the room we sit in most, I want them to be with us." I had been thinking about this for a little while, but never acted on it. I still hesitated. Would it upset me? Would I feel depressed at the sight of their urns? And another thought nagged in the back of my mind, how would visitors react? Family and friends? Of course, nobody talks about it but would they be caught off gaurd by the sight of our babies urns? I guess something inside me flipped a switch. I don't know when it happened but I stopped fearing their urns and the sadness that came with it, and I now wanted them with me.
So there they sit, on our bookshelf, and I can look over and see them at any time I want. And it's okay. At first, it made me sad...and now, I feel like they're almost here with me. Sitting in this room with us. I want them to feel loved, a part of our family, even though they aren't physically here. And I know ashes can't feel that love, and I know it's just a container for their bodies... But I am holding onto their souls in my heart. Their spirits.
No comments:
Post a Comment