Sunday, February 10, 2013

Tying up loose ends....

I think with life in general if there is something difficult to deal with we tend to procrastinate taking care of it....or even its just a tedious job in general. As our pregnancy advances with the twins I find myself in major "nesting mode" and trying to tie up loose ends that I have let go for too long. One tedious project I "neglected" for too long was filing photographs into albums. I  LOVE to take pictures....after developing them, I loose interest in the whole organizing them into albums type of thing. Sooooooo since I met my farmer almost 6 years ago life obviously got extremely busy so all the fabulous photos I have taken of the farm, our life together, our pets, and family functions have just been sitting in their envelopes from the companies I developed them from. You can only imagine the stacks and stacks and stacks of photos I dug out when I decided I better oraganize and file them before the babies come. I went through hundreds and hundreds of photos and organized them into years and the the time of year and so forth and filled up 9 photo albums with memories my husband and I had made together since we met. It was fun to go through them because you tend to forget about some of the times. We had a fabulous house warming party the February we moved into the family farm house and I had not looked at those photos in over two years. I forgot about how much fun we all had and all the people that came. Made me want to throw another party! Then I came across all of our wedding pictures we had been given by our good friends. It was so fun to go back to that happy and fun day.....it made us want to get married again too! So after several days of remembering all the good times we had, there was a packet of pictures I had stored in it's own seperate drawer....a place that was all tucked away. This large packet of pictures held the hundreds of beautiful photos of our precious daughter Gracie's birth and her 15 hours on earth, her funeral and her first birthday party we had. Now it isn't that we haven't dealt with her death, because we have.....but these photos were literally of almost every minute of her life...her beautiful life. So many milestones had been captured onto film...her yawns, smiles, feedings, visitors, and her death. I had to take myself back to every single minute of her day and there was a lot that happened that day. A lot of emotions that occurred in those 15 hours and the hours and days following her death. In an analogy that one of my medical field friends used...it's kind of like picking the scab off of a half healed wound and opening yourself back up to everything. Now all the extra pregnancy hormones did not help this process by any means. I would pick up those pictures and start to organize them and then put them down and walk away....this process was repeated many, many, many times until I had gone through everything. I had boughten a special album for her pictures that had butterflies on the cover of it....it's so beautiful and fitting for our little girl. I meticulously picked away at that stack of photos until every last one of them was labeled and organized in order. Tears were shed along the way and old emotions boiled to the surface and I was sure on many occasions I couldn't finish what I had started.....but I did. I put each photo into it's new album and as each photo found it's permanent home I could feel some healing of my heart taking place. When the album was complete, I sat and stared at it....I had done it.....I had done something I didn't think I could do. Something I had put off for 1 1/2 years because it was hard to deal with and there it sat in front of me.....done. I could feel myself putting a huge mental check mark beside this in my mind as finally being complete. I didn't realize it had been hanging in my mind in this way until I finished it. It is proudly displayed on our coffee table in our living room. I had made a mental promise to myself I would complete this project before the twins came. I want to have a picture album to show the girls their older sister. I want Gracie to be real to them. Gracie has her own area on the wall of photos and those will remain there as well to always remind the girls that their big sister is in heaven watching over them. When people ask us if the twins are our first children, our answer is alwasy the same.....no, they are our second and third and that their big sister is in heaven. Her existence will always be acknowledged at our house.
 I received two phone calls in January from the nursing instructors at University of Mary and at Sanford Nursing School asking me if I would return to do my talk on Gracie to their classes this year. I didn't hesitate to accept as Gracie's story has a lot to offer to these students. Her story impacted the students of last years classes greatly as I had many students come up and talk to me after my presentation. I actually had one fellow chase me our of the nursing building at UMary last year because he wanted to tell me how much he admired me for doing the talk to their class. As a mother and a nurse I feel like I would be letting a big lesson pass these students by if I did not do this lecture. I sat down today to review my power point presentation and Gracie's youtube video and once again my hormones did not help me very much. I broke down in tears once again and thought, "How am I suppose to find the strength to do this tomorrow?" I phoned my dear friend and coworker, Sarah for a pep talk and as always she finds the right words for me. I don't know if I will get through tomorrow without tears or not, but I am going and I am going to share Gracie's story. I know God wants me to continue to share her story and her message of unconditional love. To not share her story would be a disservice to not only the students, but also to God and my daughter. She was sent with a lesson and message and it is now up to me to continue to spread it. Having to dig deep and go back into the intense pain we felt those initial days after losing Gracie is difficult to say the least, but if we can help new nursing students understand how precious life it and how much their compassion can mean to their patients and their families then I know we are continuing God's message he sent through our daughter. The pain of losing a child doesn't "go away" or "get better" with time.....you tend to learn how to live it and not let it consume your life. You go from crying every time you think of them to smiling because of their beautiful memory. There are always bumps in the road along the way and you do come across days where you do need a good cry....the hole left in your heart is always there. Everyone deals with it in their own way, and all of us moms in the baby loss world have all figured out along the way, that no two people grieve the same way. Our childrend impacted many lives and how we choose to remember them and their messages are all unique and they are all impactful. Our children continue to give us strength, love, and support from heaven as we have learned to look for the signs from them in life. It's truly amazing what you notice when you take time to notice things that you know are not a coincidence...they are messages from our little loves. It's those moments that we all live for. So as the nesting mode at our house continues, we remember our first born and all she gave us. We take notice of her signs she sends us to help alleviate our worries about her two sisters that will be arriving in 4 1/2 weeks. And we notice the strength she give us as we continue to tie up loose ends along the way......