Comment

I wrote yesterday's post as Caroline napped on David's lap.  Tears were streaming down my cheeks and I hit "publish" even though I wasn't satisfied with my attempt to put into words exactly what I was feeling.  Had to let to go, though--hungry baby waits for no blogger!

But the amazing thing about zee interwebz is the way that you can put a half-articulated thought out there and get an answer back that's exactly what you need to hear.  Renel's comment on my post yesterday was just that.  And even though we'd all wish to never know one another, to never share the experience of losing a child, her comment was yet one more example of all the reasons I wish that I could meet up with so many of you, to cry our way through happy hour and stay up all night laughing without trying to explain the inherent contradictions and complications of love and loss.

Just in case your life is such that you don't have time to go back and troll yesterday's post for comments, I wanted to post what Renel wrote here (iPhone typos corrected just because I think she'd prefer that):

I get this in a reverse kind of way. I miss Camille all the time, every day like you miss Eliza, but who were they? We will never know and that hurts in a very tangible real way. You have Caroline to help you realize what you were missing but it does not give you who Eliza would be. I had Kai before hand and I knew exactly what I was missing only in girl form, but I still didn't know who Camille was or is. The strangest part of loving and missing a baby who is dead is that their deadness does not decrease the love and not knowing them seems almost to add to the tragedy to feel so acutely the loss without the specifics if a personality. It is odd for me and difficult to navigate because we want something to grasp onto other that the expectation and the fantasy we created around a child who should have come home with us. I'm so incredibly glad you have Caroline. That you get the opportunity to mother another child is so wonderful. But having a child either before or after does not diminish the love you have for your other child. There is room in your heart for all of your kids, something I was fearful would not be the case when pregnant with Camille. Your heart just grows to accommodate, it does not split or move one love to the side, it simply grows.


The sentence that really gets to me is "The strangest part of loving and missing a baby who is dead is that their deadness does not decrease the love and not knowing them seems almost to add to the tragedy to feel so acutely the loss without the specifics of a personality."  Yes.  That's exactly what I was trying to say.