My daughter turns three today.
We got her a special cake and tonight we will light her candles and sing happy birthday. But she won’t be there to blow out the candles.
Today is her birthday and also the day she died. Making it simultaneously one of the best and worst days of my life.
Grief and loss are contradictory like that.
I find myself wanting to blurt out to everyone that its my daughters birthday, that she existed and is loved; and at the same time, I want to go throughout the day (and my life) keeping it to myself, my own secret.
Feeling both very proud, but very protective of her.
The weight of child loss (and grief) is so unbelievably heavy at times, especially times like these. Yet, it is also like having a weight lifted when it comes to thinking of life & death, what matters and what really doesn't.
Today I will sadly celebrate my daughter’s birthday. I will continue to feel this tightness in my chest and tears in my eyes for days…with flashbacks to those days from her birth to her funeral; three long, but short years ago.
I will continue to have contradictory thoughts & feelings. I will be thankful, but feel cheated. I will feel both loved and supported but also, completely isolated & alone.
Tonight and in the coming days, I will physically ache for her and replay every moment, every decision, every feeling…because they are my most precious memories of Marly. And they are heartbreakingly beautiful. Filled with love and pain.
With my daughter turning the big three tonight, it got me thinking about my own "big three." Three moments of child loss that are worse than you can imagine.
Sometime after 10:15 PM on August 30, 2018; I heard the words“I’m so sorry, but your daughter didn’t make it” and it has become one of my “big three” moments from my child loss experience. A moment that still brings me to tears when it replays in my mind. To find out you have a daughter, but that she's dead...literally in the same sentence.
To feel both joy and sadness simultaneously is classic grief.
The other two will have to wait, for another time.