I am what I am

Mother. Wife. Woman.

Broken. Afraid. Sad. Happy. Grateful.

Day to day you see me, but you see parts of me. The parts that I try so hard to put in front. You rarely see the other parts of me. The parts that are still missing her sweet baby almost 3 years later. The part that broke that cold winter day. That part stays hidden. It gets easier to hide all the time.

But that part is still me. It still makes me who I am and is responsible for many of my thoughts and words and beliefs. It is always there, like this heavy boulder I carry with me that is invisible to everyone else. It is the part of me that was forever changed that snowy day, the day I held my child's lifeless body in my arms. The day I saw what no mother should ever see. The day I was forever changed, in good ways and in bad.

Pictures float through my mind like a dream. Memories forever stopped in time like a photograph. A photograph that through the years cracks and fades and changes.

To try to describe losing your child is like trying to tell a blind man what the most beautiful sunset looks like. How the light shines so bright it hurts your eyes but you can't bring yourself to look away. To los a child is to forever walk around with a peice of your soul missing and with your heart beating on the outside of your body, so fragile. Every day is a concerted effort to protect it, it's vulnerability so immense that all it would take is a bump to change everything forever.

I remember walking back to the Ronald McDonald house that day. My children, my mom, sister, and brother, and my friend. I remember Craig and I being last in our small procession. I remember seeing everyone in front of me, carrying everything that had been Alex in their arms. Their arms full but a peice of them taken forever. We left Alex in that hospital, but we also left our innocence there as well....

Today, I feel broken. Tomorrow I rebuild again in this wicked cycle that keeps repeating itself and will, I presume, for the rest of my life. It's an exhausting thought.