It seems as if much of my life can be summed up in stages...or separate lives that make up the "whole" if that makes any sense.
From my young years I can compartmentalize my life into various sections where it seems as if I am starting at the beginning of a different life, one that is not always better or worse, just different in different ways. Of course all of them make me into the person that I am today but sometimes it seems as if I can look back over my life and it is sometimes in sections where I emerge as a different person in a different life. Still me, still much of the same personality but just different.
In the past 13 years I have been pregnant, married, become a mom, lost a child, became pregnant again, become a mother again, gotten divorced (thankfully!), became engaged, lost a child...and now am living another different life.
13 years is a short span of time (or at least I feel it is) for that many changes! Sometimes when I sit and think about it all it makes my head spin to see all different ways my life has changed in such a short amount of time.
My life honestly really began when Nathan was born. The excitement, the nervousness, the whole learning to be a mother. Sleepless nights, learning to breastfeed, being scared to do something wrong yet loving in a way that seems unreal. The problem was about the time I was maybe, and I repeat maybe, beginning to get the hang of having a baby he was gone. Almost 4 months is not enough time with someone you love more than life. His personality was just beginning to form. What a sweet boy he was, so content even when I was a nervous wreck. Becoming a mother was one of the happiest I have ever been in my life. Then before I knew it he was gone way to soon.
I learned to grieve in that next stage of life. Grieving is such a hard process, the moments of utter helplessness, the times where even the tears and sobbing don't help the pain. The times when the happy memories can bring not only intense joy but intense pain that makes you wish you could just bury yourself under the covers of your bed and not come out for days. Learning how to just make it through a day without him.
Two years later I was pregnant again and starting another part of my life. My beautiful daughter was born and brought so much joy into my life that I never thought I would feel again. Her personality could not have been more different than Nathan's, Lily was demanding as a baby and I had to learn a whole new role of motherhood. Where Nathan seemed to be always be content, Lily was only content when things were going her way. Then came the SMA diagnosis and so we learned to live a while different life where there were machines, wheelchair strollers, therapists coming to our house, trying to keep our house as germ free as we can, and learning how to live with SMA in a way that we were not given a chance to with Nathan. There were flights to Newark New Jersey to see doctors, surgeries, EMS coming to our house when Lily had episodes, another surgery, fights with insurance companies, and the list goes on and on.
Then somewhere in the mist of all of that (and the first year of Lily's life!) my now ex-husband walks out on us (thankfully...although it was pure drama at the time).
After almost 7 wonderful years with my absolutely beautiful and patient daughter (yes, she became such a patient little girl...most of the time) she is suddenly gone leaving such a huge void in my life. Huge void and having to learn to live life in another whole different way. Grieving again for someone, my daughter, whose life was to short because 7 years with Lily will never be enough.
By the way Steve came along too, I fell in love, he asked me to marry him one night while Lily was sleeping in the other room, and that became another beautiful part of "story" as well.
Sometimes I wonder how I have learned to live life again. Of course learning to live life is an ongoing process and one that I stumble through, like watching a baby learn how to walk. I've had happy times, sad times, angry times, depressed times, but through it all I am learning how to live life in this new and still strange stage of my life. Learning how to honor the memory of my 2 beautiful children helps me to keep them alive in my life. I want them both to be proud of me, I want them both to look down from Heaven and be able to say, "Hey, that is my Mommy and I love her!"
Each change has been like learning to live in a new culture...scary, exciting, nerve wracking, and different but it has made me stronger and thankful for things that I probably would have taken for granted. I still love my life.....and thankful and proud that it is me who gets to live it. I will always miss my babies, never a day goes by that I don't think of Lily or Nathan a million times but I can still carry them into my "new culture" with me and that brings me peace.
My life is crazy, sometimes sad, often hectic, and busy but it is my life and I am finally learning how to live it. Each "separate life" has become part of the whole of my life that is making me...well me!
***To my Lily-Bee and Natie-Bug I love you both soooooo much and miss you both soooo much!******
Thank you for letting is be apart of your beautiful life. Xo
Posted by: Nikki | February 23, 2011 at 01:13 AM