On Changes

We laid on top of the covers, sideways on the bed. Curling up because we’re both too tall and too old to just hang off the sides like noodles. The quilt still smells quilty and despite me loving it, tonight I wasn’t fond of the memories it was pulling out of me.

We stared teary eyed into one another. Wondering why the feelings are like this, and not like that. Why do I have one baby in my belly and another baby in my mind. Why does it feel like it’s ok to move ahead but not move on. We miss her.

There is this mix of feelings going on, and we find ourselves not wanting to lose ourselves and forget. We grieve at the thought of her being forgotten. I feel disconnected, like I’m holding back and the raven at my soul-window tries to make me agree.

Mourning this life that is going to change, to be gone. It’s a weird state of mind that we’ve noticed with every new impending baby. All pregnant mamas at some point have the realization that they will miss the right now, the way things are just before they are different forever. The best is yet to come, the good is what is around the corner, but it’s our nature to grieve the changes.

We want to let it ride us, to not fight or run from it. But it seems to hurt more than any previous time. The letting go of the now and embracing the new – it feels like saying goodbye some more.

We accidentally fell asleep laying crossways on top of the covers, and woke at 5am feeling like it was the worst idea ever. We hadn’t meant to escape so deeply, hand in hand, to the place of slumber where you can’t even dream because your mind needs rest.  Had we planned better, we’d at least be straight out along the bed the right way.  A nine month pregnant woman shouldn’t ever, ever fall asleep curled up the wrong way.

Everything was in the wrong place, my hip was in mexico and my pelvis was screaming that it had its suitcase packed and was moments away from leaving me. I limped up, needed help to roll over and wondered where our tears had dried on the handed down quilt.

I remember my grandmother, and the child she lost, and wondered if her tears had dried here too. When she had another, did she feel this tension? This pull from the future, but quiet whisper of the past to never forget?

She is no longer with me either, and she rarely spoke of her loss, so I don’t even know how it felt to her. When her baby boy died just days old.  What piece of her was lost back then? She often had a troubled soul, despite being incredibly loving and at peace in her faith, and I always wondered if it’s because she never fully recovered. She never let people in, but I never knew if it was because that generation never let people in.

Was her heart kept at arms length because seeing inside would be breaking it all open? She left this world long before I would know her same pain, and I wonder if she would have words of wisdom for me now. One of her favorite sayings was always “this too shall pass…” except she had a way of saying it that didn’t aggravate me. She said it with the peace of someone who understands that things really do seem less hard tomorrow, and I found comfort in that word from her at even the youngest age.

It never hit me until now that she knew exactly what she was talking about.

{image source}