Birthday Post Past Due

The Twins’ birthday was last week.

It is hard to celebrate Abby walking and laughing and grinning and talking and cooing and dancing and living and Will in a tiny little silver box upon our piano.  Still, I didn’t expect it would be so nearly impossible to force myself to plan a birthday for just one child.

Grief’s a bitch.

Frankly, that’s all I can think to say tonight.

Grief’s a bitch, and she kicks you smack in the teeth right when you find yourself smiling despite it all…right when you find yourself talking about healing and about lessons and about the good that God can bring from bad.

FFFFFFFFFFFttttttttt.   There’s her foot in your face, and you’re tasting blood and dirt again just like the day the world stopped when you lost whomever it was that you never really thought you would lose, and you find yourself unable to function to do even the slightest little thing.

It’s a real pisser (dare I say) to have the joy of Abby’s birthday and the sorrow of Will’s on the same day.  A pisser.

Anyway. 

Mark was the one who bought boxed cake mix and canned icing the day before her birthday and made the cupcakes.  It wasn’t that I didn’t want to…but that my ability to do so was encased in cement.  Logically, I knew what had to be done (I had picked out a sweet Little Tykes kitchen for her the week before)…but I could not.  It was also Mark who picked out three balloons:  a smiley face for Sam because he is our brave big brother, a butterfly for Abby because she is our little earthly angel, and a car for Will…because every little boy deserves a car.

We have no family here and we planned no big party.  Just the four of us at home to unwrap presents, go out to Mexican and then to visit Will’s tree and light his lantern.   Sam and I were delighted to find Will’s tree surrounded by patches of wild violets that had yet been mowed.  Sam was the first to pick one, but I think I was the first to put it on the tree.  We covered his tree with little violets.

And then we set Abby next to Will’s tree and told her about her twin brother.  She gleefully plucked off the little violets and shook the tree heartily, grasping tightly around its narrow trunk.

More bitter than sweet this first birthday was for me. 

We  plan to have an ‘official’ birthday party for Abby in the next few weeks with friends and birthday hats and fancy cake and whatnot.

…but I couldn’t fathom all that fanfare on the actual day that Will was born to this earth, even if his spirit already lived in heaven.

…lately I find myself in the place that I’m sure every babylost mother has been before me:  so intensely aware that the world moves on without your lost baby.  That the world forgets.  Good gracious, the world forgets us all eventually unless we do something extraordinarily great or extraordinarily terrible.  I have the energy for neither…just to remember my William and love my Sam and Abby.

And that’s as good as it gets for now.