I haven't posted anything on this blog in almost two years. I've meant to, I've had things to say, just no time or energy to say them.
2012 was.... damn. What was it? Wonderful? Terrible? A world of laughter, a world of tears. If you take the average of life events from 2012, it was absolutely a wash. But then, the average takes out the best and the worst, doesn't it? It leaves you with the mundane, the bland, the C-student experiences of existence, void of extremes in emotion and substance. On a scale of 1-10, 2012 had a 1 and a 10, stark opposites that cannot be averaged.
When someone says, "I have good news and bad news," I say, "tell me the bad news first," because the good news can be there to cheer you up, to offer a kind hand after a gut-punch. We experienced death last year. The slow, painful kind of death that robs your loved one of themselves, the kind that makes you keenly aware that each conversation you have with them will be a conversation that you cannot have ever again, so you hold onto each detail, no matter how insignificant or boring it seems. You tell yourself, "Remember this voice. Remember this conversation. Remember."
My mother-in-law was a wonderful woman we were lucky to have. She raised my husband to be a compassionate man who loves his family and is respectful and even-handed in all he does. Those two sentences look so hollow and impersonal written like that, but they're true. She considered him, her only child, to be her life's work, and she did a damn fine job of it. To watch her wither and die in those 19 months was hellish. Not because I loved her (I did), but because I saw how he withered to lose her. It's been five months. Time will not erase or mute his pain. 1 on the scale because that's as low as the scale goes.
{Note: I never really cried. Not until Sandy Hook, a month later. The night after that happened I was home alone and collapsed on the couch. I sobbed for what seemed like hours: loud, braying, honking wails of sorrow and despair. It was a physical, racking pain. I cried for them as she would have. And I missed her so very much.}
and yet.
When Natalie was diagnosed, back in March of 2011, she confronted it with grace and poise. As the rest of us ran in circles waving our arms in the air screaming with our hair on fire, she sat and watched, sipped on her Starbucks, and was composed. A few months into treatment, she said to me, "You know I'm going to die. Unlike most people, I have the opportunity to have a general timeline of when that will happen." (I was still very much in denial about that inevitability) Then she leveled her gaze at me, steady and unwavering, as always, and said "I don't know if you are planning to have another child, but if so, I'd like to meet them."
Even writing it now, that seems awkward. To discuss fertility and family planning with one's mother-in-law really brings up issues that most people, myself included, would rather not discuss. But Shit Got Real after the diagnosis, and being fairly blunt became a thing in our family.
We'd become fairly set in our routine with M, and she was almost 4 at that point. It looked as if we might be a one-kid family, and I was okay with that, if a touch sad she'd miss out on the sibling experience. We were fine with this version of ourselves.
I'm so glad Natalie gave us that nudge, because Louisa is the most amazing addition to our family, a piece we didn't even know was missing. She joined us in April, and she and Natalie felt the same sun for seven months. And I am so thankful for that overlap, for that precious, brief, bittersweet time. So thankful for my sweet, good-natured baby, content to travel so young and be held and sleep on her grandmother's lap and laugh and marvel at the shiny breathing tube. Each moment they were together was an exquisite kind of pain, sharp and immediately tinged with nostalgia. It was emotionally exhausting because joy and sadness weren't meant to occupy the same space, and it burns a lot of energy when they do.
DJ, his dad, M, and I didn't know we needed Louisa Ann. But when her dad comes home from work, his face lined with stress and his gruff expression masking the sorrow of such acute loss, she sees him and squeals with delight. He goes to her and scoops her up, engulfing her little body in his arms, their faces pressed together. I see him, eyes closed, breathing her in, not smiling but for a moment disarmed and overwhelmed by her simple love. 10 on the scale, because that's as high as the scale goes.
