Eleven.

It’s an odd thing to celebrate a birthday of a boy who no longer lives. But I suppose it is no odder than loving a child who is simply a memory. - Redneck Mommy website

I'll remember you, Eliza.  In eleven years, in eleventy-hundred.  And I'll love you forever.  It's just what mommies do.

In January of 2012, I started the draft of a blog post that was inspired by a post written by Tanis Miller. At that time, her blog was called Redneck Mommy and she wrote about her son's eleventh birthday. I saved the link to that blog post, and that line with which it started. I remember being really struck with the idea of "loving a child who is simply a memory." I copied the link and then I wrote those few sentences, a promise to my girl. I wish I'd copied & pasted the rest of the post because the last few weeks I've been thinking about it. I remembered--nearly ten years later--that it was so meaningful to me, that I wanted to go back to it and see if I felt the same in ten years, when I was celebrating (is that the word for it?) Eliza's eleventh birthday.

But the post isn't there anymore. The blog has archives but they only go back to February 2013. I don't know why. Sometimes things feel too tender for this world, and maybe that post was one of them.

Photo by Timothée Duran on Unsplash    

On her birthday, I feel too tender for this world. Nudge me ever so slightly and my tears will spill over. It's a day like any other but of course it's a day like no other in my life.

Any day is a day without her, and I've already had a thousand days. 4,015, to be exact (or not exact, because I'm not figuring in leap years). And yet this is the day where my throat feels tight and my temper feels short and my heart feels heavy. This is where I want a wish that comes true without undoing all my other wishes that have come true. This is where I want just one more thing--one more girl--to make everything complete. Except, again, it's not just a day. It's always and every day.

Maybe this is just the day that I give myself permission to bring that longing up to the surface, to look it in the face and to remember--as long as I can stand it--how painful it is to rip yourself apart to bring a baby into this world, knowing that baby has already been ripped away from you. 

How did I survive? How does any of us?

I think people don't talk enough about how tedious grief is. How many times can we rehash the same sorrow? But the other thing about losing a child is that the grief is always new. Tonight, I miss a ten-year-old. Tomorrow, I'll be missing an eleven-year-old. And when I say I'm missing her, I mean, she was here and now she's gone. I felt her skin and bones. I wiped blood from her nose. I held her tiny little body. I have her footprints. I can provide physical evidence, not just that unreliable eye witness testimony. She was here and now she's gone and those facts don't change in eleven years.

I've been thinking about eleven.

Eleven is the year you get your letter from Hogwarts.

Eleven & Eliza are alliterative.

Eleven is the last year of elementary school. 

Eleven is little, but also big. When I was little, my friend Erin and I would dress up and play pretend and we would always say, "And pretend we're twelve" because to a couple of seven-year-olds, twelve was glamorous and grown. Even when you're seven, you know that eleven is still little. It's just on the cusp of everything that comes next, and wouldn't I love to see what that would be for her.

I wrote a book called Unimaginable about a baby I've spent eleven years imagining. But maybe eleven is unimaginable to me.

My friend Monica and I got to know each other in middle school, although we didn't really become friends until high school. She says that she can imagine Eliza at eleven because she knew me at that age. I don't trust myself to imagine her at eleven, although once when I was collaging in a journal, I cut out a little girl in a Tommy Hilfiger ad who had on sunglasses. Somehow, I was convinced she looked like a preteen Eliza. Is that what eleven might have looked like? Confident and cheeky, with shiny brown hair?

I study her sisters--a brown eyed girl, a green eyed girl, a blue eyed girl, light brown hair, medium brown hair, blonde hair, and I wonder who looks most like Eliza. Who acts most like Eliza? How would she be different from three variations on this genetic combo? It baffles me the way they look and act so much and so little like me and like each other. They are each so fiercely themselves. What clues can they give me about who Eliza would and wouldn't be? I wish I knew. 

That's the heart of it, right? That's why grief might be tedious but never gets old. I'll always wish I knew her and everyday she would have been someone a little bit different. I miss every age, every stage, every moment.

That paradox of grief: it's constant and constantly changing, shifting, sliding, slicing, soothing. The love, though. That's the same. 

Ten years ago, when I tried to imagine what the eleventh birthday would feel like, I couldn't see any of the details. But I knew then I'd love her forever and of course I was right about that.

So here's to eleven years without you, my beautiful missing girl. My winter baby. My favorite name. My first child. My almost dream come true. My most joyful pregnancy. My greatest sorrow is not knowing who you would be today. 

Eleven years ago, I never could have believed I'd make my way to this full and happy life, but the root of the root (and the bud of the bud) is that part of what fills up this life is the space my heart keeps just for you. 

Eleven years, always & forever.