car rides and songs

This morning as I was driving into work I had a moment. It really just lasted a little while and then I was pretty good for the rest of the day. When that happens it makes me realize that I really am mostly OK and am able to carry on with my daily life. I get sad and that is the bottom line and it comes from nowhere sometimes and other times there is something that sparks it. Today, something sparked it.

I have a pen-pal (now email pal) that I have been writing to since the 3rd grade. We have never met, but we have kept in touch through the years. Sometimes more often and sometimes less often. I had sent her a Christmas card with a note in it that I was expecting and when I was due. After I had the miscarriage I tried to contact her, but she must have changed her e-mail address because it kept getting sent back to me. I heard from her this morning and in her e-mail she congratulated me and said it must be any day now. She was right, it should have been any day now. I wrote her back explaining what happened, it brought back those memories when I was writing it. I suppose that while I was on my way to work I was thinking about how I was going to respond to her. I knew that any response would have made her feel bad, but I had to let her know the situation. It is always awkward to tell someone who doesn't know what happened. It happened a couple of times at work with some people there.


When I was almost at work the Jack Johnson song If I could came on. There is a line in the song that states, "They say that new life makes losing life easier to understand." I thought to myself, what if that lost life was a new life? It doesn't make it any easier to understand at all. It is so much more difficult to understand that. Your grieving process is so different.

I grieve for my grandmother and think about the things that she wasn't here for, but then she lived her whole life and saw so much. I have memories of her from so many events in my life. When you lose a new life you grieve for what you don't have and the memories that you can't make. I will never get to hear Lia say her first words or take her first steps. I will never see her off on her first day of school. These are memories that I don't have, but I long for them. Yes, there will be other babies, I know this in my heart, but they will not be Lia. I will always know that Lia should have been ______ this year. (Fill in whatever milestone you wish). I also know that if I did not lose Lia, my next child may not be here. It is hard to think about it sometimes. In my day dreams I can picture Lia growing to be a beautiful little girl, but that is not reality. I will never see Lia Rose grow up, again that is a memory that I will never have. I do not get to look back and remember her childhood when I am older. I get to think of all the things that should have been. She cannot be replaced, she will always be my first child.