October's Hidden Shadow: Our Girls Would Be Seven This Month

Seven Years! Seven Years!
One moment - One year - seven years ago this month,  changed my entire being forever. In 2006 I experienced an early pregnancy miscarriage. A few months later we discovered that I was pregnant with twins. We knew them through ultrasound and maternal connection for six months. After a long journey and struggle, our babies passed away. LeOra passed while in utero and Rhea passed nine days after her birth from complications of Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome.

Every year during the month of October the shadow of their loss and the grief that accompanies it seems stronger. Every year has felt different but it is still there. I remember how all consuming the grief was in the beginning. It was that way for a long time. And now it just comes in waves. And sometimes at the most random and annoying times. At the bookstore as I search for books all about the strategies of war for my boys and I come face to face with an American Girls display. Or at Costco when all I need is to sit in their comfy couches on display for a quick rest and it just Has to be  facing the racks of frilly Easter dresses that I'll never get to buy.

In the beginning I mourned the loss of what I had with my girls. The feeling of carrying them within me. The loss of the connection and the babies I would never hold. I often wondered if they would always be "our Babies."  But they aren't. They have grown just as the other kids have grown. And now most of the sorrow comes at the thought of the time that we have missed and the life experiences that we haven't shared together.

The loss of a child is profound and powerful. I visited with a friend this month who is in her 80's. I was reminded of a Mother's Heart and it's power when she shared the story about the loss of one of her first children. She spoke of the experience as if it had recently happened. In reality she had gone on to bare ten children and a lifetime had passed. But her Mother Heart still aches for that little baby she was never able to care for in this life. There is a shadow that follows a mother who has lost one of her children. In time it becomes clearer. Easier to see through and manage life despite its constant presence. But the Mother Heart Never Forgets the child she is waiting to hold in her arms again.