bittersweet

I did it...I went to my first baby shower. I hope I didn't bring too many dead baby momma vibes with me. My sweet friends Stephanie and Chad are going to be welcoming little baby Walter sometime next month. She sweetly gave me a free pass not to attend a few weeks ago, but babies are something to celebrate so I went. Several times, I was looking around the room for a quick exit, planning how I could slip out without making too much of a fuss. Several of the people in the room knew about Andrew's death so I am pretty sure it would have been noticed if I had freaked out and left. I remember being Stephanie just a few short months ago...full of baby boy and hope and love. I wish I could have that bright eyed optimism again, sure that everything was going to turn out wonderfully. I look at the world with squinted, doubtful eyes now. What is around the corner that is going to totally wreck me? I let even the smallest things totally derail me now...I dropped a bowl on the floor the other night and as I was cleaning it up, I felt so angry and defeated. My world has been shaken to its very foundation and I don't know how to rebuild, or if I even want to. I am going to quote a blog I read, and I hope my family will excuse me for the language.

"Now, somehow, I have to make this muck into a home. Losing your child is a lesson in how to make Shit Houses. Here's a pile of crap, live in it."

Our once beautiful world now feels like a wrecked, abandoned shell of a place. We of course have each other and our forever loving and constant friends and family. But when I am alone and really start to think about my world, it feels lonely and sad and destroyed without my baby boy. A million sad and awful things run through my head on a daily basis...remembering the Easter outfit Corinne monogrammed for him that he'll never wear...how I'll never hear his laugh or see his smile. But the loudest most clear thought is how desperately incomplete I feel. I was thinking the other day...women are born with every egg they will ever have in their bodies. My four year old niece Elise is carrying around the eggs that will one day become her children. So for as long as I have been alive, I have had my Andrew with me...and now he is gone from me for the first time. (I promise I don't have serious mental problems...I just have a lot of time to think...see where your mind goes in a situation like this.)

But, I move along, day by day, hoping for a brighter future for us. I know one day it will be better. I try to look for positives and I have found a few in Andrew's death. I am now a much more thankful person...thankful for my family, thankful for my healthy, beautiful niece and nephew, thankful for my gracious and strong husband. When the day is nice, I appreciate it a little more. I appreciate the good days and I appreciate the hell out of a good glass of wine. I have moments where I feel totally defeated and bruised (see above paragraph) but I generally come out of it feeling just a little better each time.