Holding her

The first days were filled with thoughts of Ruby suffering. In the weeks that passed I tried desperately to train my thoughts to skip over those awful days. As the months went on, I was more in control of what I thought about, and what I skipped over. 

 

It had been a long time since I have let myself go to that place. I was laying in bed, trying to go to sleep. I was missing my little baby, and thinking of her sweet face and happy eyes. I remembered that right before she was to be intubated, I asked for a few minutes that we could hold and love on her. Once intubated, it would make it very hard to hold her, and I knew she would be sedated, and sleeping. I figured it would be a little while before we saw her awake again, since she would be intubated through this rough time, and through her transplant and in the days after. 

I remember walking over to the side of her crib, and she reached for me. She had never done that before. She grabbed my fingers and squeezed them. I held her and loved her and she looked so deep into my eyes. The was the last time I saw her awake. That was the last time I held her living.

These memories first came sweet to me, but were then followed with the hours and days after our sweet moments with Ruby. Each flash of a memory felt like a brick dropping onto my chest. One after another, relentlessly. I had not been to this dark place for so long, and I was untrained for the heaviness and hurt that these memories were inflicting on my soul. 

After I could take no more, I asked God to help me. Please take this pain from me, it is just too much. I got out of bed, and walked quickly into her room, thirsty to be reminded of her existence in our home, and in our family during happy times. I curled myself up in her rocking chair, and wrapped myself into one of her blankets and looked around her sweet room. A sticky smudge of Tylenol on her dresser, her clothes from the hospital, still not put away. I could see her in each of the outfits, and it brought happy memorials back into my mind, of dressing her each morning... of laying under the trees at the hospital... and showing her off to the hospital staff. Sometimes, just going off memories alone is not enough. I need to see the physical evidence that she was here. It happened. She was my actual daughter, in the flesh. I cared for her, I touched her, I nursed her, I mothered her. Those things in her room remind me of that. 

After wiping my tears with a burp cloth I kept in the pocket of the rocker, I felt peaceful again. Sometimes going through such a dark and deep grief can leave me feeling closer to Ruby. I am beginning to think it is necessary every so often to just let down my guard to my thoughts and emotions, and let the hurt sink deeply in. It is a good reality check. It puts my perspectives back into place. I reminds me of what is most important, and confirms my testimony of eternal families, and a plan that God has created for my family. I don't like it right now, but I have hope that one day it will become beautiful to me.