tacosformilo

I just want him back. I’d give anything to just have him back. It feels like there will never be full resolution. He will always be missing from my life. I just miss him so deeply. The softness of his hair, him holding my hands as he nursed, the joy is his face when he looked at me, I’ll just forever miss it. It’s all so incredibly unfair. He was so perfect. He was such a good baby, clingy, but…

I’ve been putting this off for over a week. Going into Christmas I didn’t really realize how hard things were becoming. A few days before, I realized that I was putting holiday things off, and I couldn’t do that. I had to push through it anyways and not withdraw. A big task was taking Gabe to see Santa. I didn’t think this was going to be hard, but I was disappointed that I had drug my feet so…

Sometimes I think it is getting easier, and others it just very much isn’t. Nothing in our lives has really changed since September 18, but it all feels so starkly different. I’m forgetting what it was like to be overwhelmed with two small kids 24/7 and settling into life with just an almost 4 year old and almost 18 year old. This is exactly what I didn’t want after Gabe was born. I didn’t want…

I’m spending time today doing things I have been putting off. Things I know I need or want to do, but doing them just means one less thing left to do for or because of Milo. Today just seems to be a day when it suddenly sets in that I’m never getting him back. Nothing will ever be the same. I wrote out checks for some of the hospital bills. What’s extra dumb about that, is more than half of them…

It is still fresh. I don’t know when it will no longer feel so fresh and all consuming. I feel like, on the outside, that things are progressing. I’m putting one foot in front of the other. I’m carrying on. It’s not getting easier, as in less painful or sad, it’s becoming more routine. That’s all. Just routine to be stuck in this mental space where it’s numb and heavy. I’m starting to feel the…

I feel like the second month was longer than the first. Hands down. It’s also been a somewhat easier month. Nothing major has happened. We’ve just been coasting and waiting, eagerly, to hear anything from the medical examiner. After a flurry of activity and projects started around the house we have slowed way down and are now just taking things day by day. Subtle changes still continue to catch…

They happen at the most random and unassuming times. Today I’m driving, listening to music, totally fine and eager to go to IKEA. Suddenly I’m reliving the moments sitting and watching the ER staff try to revive Milo, hearing their hushed and hurried conversation, going through their check lists of things to try to get something, anything, to work. I’m remembering the few minutes we got to see…

It looked like a very familiar, yet drastically different place. The seasons have changed since I was last there and all the trees have yellow leaves or no leaves left. We took a walk down to the river front first, and within the firts few yard of walking, it hit me. The last time I was here Milo was alive and well. It was only days before he died. It was such a normal and routine place for us, and now it feels deflated and strange. When I got to the river I could see the water so well with all the foliage dying back. We turned the path and there it was. The bench down by the river, now surrounded by a picture perfect carpet of leaves. This was the last place I took his portrait, for his 11 month photo. It ended up being the photo we used for his obituary. It was also so haunting to be there and know that he was there, and now never will be again.

  It was okay. I had shed a few tears while walking, but it wasn’t that bad. Eventually we had made it back around to the playground and Gabe took off into the structure and to play with the few kids that were there. I don’t know why I did it, but I went right to the swing. I didn’t think it was going to hit me as hard as it did, I thought I had already dealt with the tears I needed to shed. I put my hand on it, and of course, it still felt the same. It was still real. Then I lost it. I just stood in the empty playground and cried. Hot, effortless tears ran down my face as Gabe came over to me. He’s become accustomed to finding me like this and he says “Oh, you miss Milo?” and I respond yes, and he looks at the ground and says “We all miss Milo.”

I was never more glad for an empty park. The one other mom and two older kids soon left and it was just Gabe and I alone there. I went to a bench in the back and just sat and cried. I needed to do this. I needed to be able to go back to the park. It wasn’t fair to Gabe to never take him again. I sat for another 15 minutes or so just trying to take it all in. It was so gloomy, lonely, and silent aside from Gabe climbing and sliding. It was also calm, peaceful, and innocent. This was a happy place. I need it to be a happy place.

It’s just a park, I thought. But no, it’s more than that. It was one of the few places that Milo absolutely loved. He loved the swing – we had orderd him one for indoor use this winter for his birthday gift. He always smiled and babbled so big in it. He enjoyed the thrill of going a little too fast and a little too high, which was high adventure for my little mellow fellow. He would flash that worried face for a split second when I pushed him higher and then would melt into his huge grin when he locked eyes with me and knew THIS was fun. The most fun. He had swung in this particular swing more than any other all summer. It’s a unique swing, worn and warped with age and exposure to the elements. I stood by it for several minutes, just feeling it’s texture and the weight of it swinging empty. I wanted so badly to push it and feel the resistance of him in it. I wanted to hear the creak of the chains, but without his weight it didn’t make the sound.

But, then there is guilt. Nothing I do or say comes without guilt. How can I just be okay one day and completely broken down another? It is so odd to be stuck in this point where it feels like the last two years of your life have suddenly been erased, but yet you know they happened, and Milo was real. I am learning how to be okay with our lives moving forward even though it feels like we are leaving him behind.

I’ve started having dreams with him in them. Not really dreams about him, but dreams where he is a part of my life and actions. These dreams only come in the early morning, usually after I have been woken by Gabe and Antonio getting up, and then I fall back asleep for a while. It’s been consistent the past few days that Milo has been there. I’m afraid that even acknowledging that the dreams have happened and that I like them will somehow make them stop. I’ve also had a few odd experiences the past few days with constant ringing in my ears and seeing little bits of floating or flying light. I don’t want to get my hopes up, or read too much into it and call it something it isn’t, but I also am not going to dissmiss it’s occurance as insignificant either.

I don’t know how to talk to people about Milo. I think that is currently the hardest thing. I want to talk about him, even when it’s hard. I talked about him insessantly when he was alive and it feels unfair to not be able to talk freely about him. I don’t even know what I would say. Everything I have to say about him is in past tense or about things we wished he would do, and all of that is sad. It’s just hard because I can tell people don’t want to upset me or make me feel bad, but there is really very few things that could make me feel any worse than when it’s awkward and they apologize for even bringing him up. Like, why would it be perfectly fine to memorialize him and encourage me to do special things to remind me of him, but then never talk about him like he was a real person. He was real. He is real.

It’s so confusing trying to navigate this life of mother-who-has-lost-a-baby. I will always be his mother, but he just stops getting to be my son, and is no longer a part of my everyday life it seems. I just get to go on and write a new chapter in a book I never intended to author. This book has been written many times before, and will be many times over and over again, yet the story will always hurt and the ending will always be sad. I want to find a way, though, to celebrate the triumps we have during our grief. I’ve already learned that those feel good moments only really happen after we feel all of the bad and miserable ones. It’s like a dawn after a storm. Every dark day seems to be followed by a brighter one. That outlook makes me not fear the difficult days as much since they tend to hit randomly and without warning.

I didn’t expect the day after Halloween to be so bad. I thought I had made it through the hardest part – seeing Gabe in his costume and taking the pictures with the bear wearing Milo’s costume. I really thought that was going to wreck me, but it didn’t. It was after I reviewed the pictures the next day and realized this was it. My expectations for what these photos could have been, and realizing what they aren’t, wrecked me. This was not how I envisioned those photos turning out. I had been looking forward to them since early summer when we made the costume plans. Pictures like these were the ones I was looking forward to taking THE MOST with my boys. I spent years wishing for cute little kids to take kitchy holiday photos of. I had them. It was almost perfect.

I wallowed that day. It was hard and dark, but then I felt better. I had endured it, and as a reward, some of the dark was lifted and I was allowed to see a glimpse of normal life again. It’s like a little bit of the fog has been lifted and I can think a little clearer. I was sick over the weekend, but today I did manage to go grocery shopping and that wasn’t a complete fiasco. I think I actually bought things we actually needed and have a semi-plan what to do with the ingredients instead of just having wandered aimlessly and buying a random jumble of things that don’t really equate to meals for the rest of my family.

I know there will be more hard days and set backs. I still can’t scroll through my camera roll and look at pictures of Milo without feeling incredibly jealous that I don’t get to have him here anymore. He was just so freaking cute. Like, cuter than any kid I ever imagined I could make. I even felt a little guilty that I thought he might be cuter than Gabe. Those dimples just did me in. I hope I get to contine to see them when I sleep.

Today I wish I knew exactly what happened. I just want to know why. The waiting to hopefully be told what killed my perfect baby is dragging me down. I just can’t fathom what would do this. He was completely normal, growing, thriving, and about to turn one. I tried to get some work done today. I tried to go down and edit some images and work on thank you cards. I stumbled into the folders of…

It’s happening, but I don’t even realize it. I’m withdrawing from life. I just don’t want to do much. It’s all just another way to distract because literally any time I am not distracted, I am thinking about how much I miss him, how I just want him back, and how I want my life back. Driving in the car, wandering stores, trying to sit and craft something, it all leaves quiet space in my head that…

I haven’t been able to write much the past week. I haven’t really done anything at all. I was so wrapped up in starting new projects, keeping distracted, and trying to basically not deal, and it didn’t really work. I just got burnt out and now all I’ve done for the past week is sit and stare at my phone, played with Snapchat, and only did the things I wanted to. I am going to see a therapist for…

There’s really no good way to recap this. It is all such a blur, but a painful, numbing one and not the fluid or fuzzy kind of blye. I stared at the clock on my car dashboard today as the time changed to 12:55pm – the time they ‘called’ his death and stopped efforts to revive him. I know now he was already long gone by then. The sound of the voice in the room that had to utter that official…

Fall was such a new thing for me when we moved to Michigan. It was magic that first year seeing foliage change for the first time ever. Last fall was even more beautiful. I had two boys, the leaves were so vibrant and held on for a long time it seemed. It was just stunning and I made sure to get out and enjoy it as much as I could before it was too cold. I had spent most of the Spring and Summer…

I’ve become a member of what may seem like the saddest club on the planet. It is sad. It’s not a club many are trying to gain entry to either. There are some really good people here though. October 15 is natural pregnancy, stillbirth, infant and child loss day. The statistic is 1 in 4 women have experienced one of those horrible things. In my personal circle of friends the number seems much…

We have been busy during all of this fog. I decided pretty quickly that all of Milo’s things needed to be put away. Not gotten rid of, just put away for now until the next step made sense. With that we decided to give Gabe his very own big boy room and fully decorate it just for him. It would also let us start painting and doing things to our house since we haven’t changed anything about it since…