loss

thinking.

Posted by

1

I’ve had to do a lot of thinking lately. I know that sounds weird because you think everyday, but I feel like lately it’s been “extra hard” thinking.  Just FYI, this post talks about my current pregnancy, so if you’re having a bad day please guard your heart. I will not be offended.

For example-

• Am I going to be ok with the giant dinosaur being moved away from Kenley’s door? I will have to look at the physical door every day now when I walk to Landon’s room. You might think it’s stupid, but trust me, it’s not.

• There has been talk about a baby shower for this baby. I didn’t have one for Kenley because I bought every.single.thing. she could have ever needed in her entire first year of life. While I, in theory, would love to throw this baby a shower…I would feel more guilt than ever imgaineable because I didn’t have one for K. How could I not have had one for her; For my perfect sweet girl. It breaks my heart.

• How am I going to deal with her nursery? I know some people say “it’s like a hand me down”, or “reuse some of the things for the new baby’s nursery”. While I appreciate their insight, it’s just not that easy. Repainting her room means I will (willingly) paint over the color I spent so many months picking out. I bought 7 samples of paint before finding her color. SEVEN. It had to be perfect, and it was absolutely perfect– but I can’t reuse the same color. Her dresser will be reused for her little sister, and needs to be repainted as well. I spent a month painting that thing, so happy and enjoying every second of it.

Now, thinking about repainting the dresser makes me want to die. It makes me feel like a traitor to my own daughter. This feeling goes along with everything in her nursery that I will be replacing (don’t say it’s not replacing, because it IS)  for our new daughter. It’s a whole separate level of weird grief.

• I know that I will feel sad using the same clothes for this baby that I bought specifically for Kenley. I want to use them, but at the same time I want to get rid of everything that was specifically hers. I would feel horrible if I really did get rid of it, because they are her things. They are the things we specifically for her; for the daughter that we so badly wanted, yet just couldn’t keep for some reason.

• I can’t help but think that she was failed by modern medicine. It’s 2015/16 and she died inside of me; inside of the one place where she was supposed to be the safest. My body failed her, because someone somewhere SOMEHOW missed something very important on one of Kenley’s ultrasounds. We had so many that it blows my mind it happened.  I do not believe I was given enough NSTs. I had ONE….because I asked for it. I’m sorry, but listening to my baby’s HB on a doppler, once every 2 weeks, for five seconds is NOT good enough. My poor girl, I wish I could have given her better care. I wish I would have been taken seriously when I told ALL of my doctors that I knew she needed to come at 38 weeks. She died at 38+4. Cue all the guilt in the whole wide world.

• Naming this beautiful child I’m carrying might be one of the hardest things I’ll ever have to do in my life. I knew since the age of 21 that if I ever had a daughter, her name would be Kenley. I told Shane and he agreed. We knew her name 9 years before we had her. We never wavered. And now? Now I get to say her name forever, sure, but through grief and sadness. How is any of this fair?

• How can I make myself enjoy this pregnancy? I think I’m keeping my distance, as I’m sure most people do during a subsequent pregnancy after losing their child. How am I for sure that this child will come home to us? What if I was to go through all of the preparations again, and get excited, and this baby dies too? I have an anterior placenta this pregnancy, so I’m already not going to be able to feel kicks as early as before. I can’t find her HB on my doppler yet, when I found K’s @ 10 weeks. It’s like everything is telling me to just “keep your distance” and I don’t want to, but I also feel like I hands down have to.

• We have 2 embryos on ice; they are male embryos. I love having Landon SO much. He was my first baby, and I would never change that obviously… but boys are hard. Maybe it was just Landon, but he was crazy. He didn’t sleep through the night until age 3, and that’s being SUPER generous because he still had a rough night 4/7 days a week up until Kindergarten. Thinking about having this girl, then going on to have 2 more boys freaks me out. On the other hand, those are my babies. I fought so hard and went through so much to get them that I feel terrible for even thinking about NOT having them. When we started the IVF process things were still super fresh for us.

I told Shane that no matter how many PGS normal embryos we got, that’s how many we were going to have. So we got 3. We were satisfied with that number. Now that I’m pregnant i’m worried that I won’t want to go through this again. I love being pregnant; it makes me feel so grounded and amazing. I had pretty rough pregnancies before this one. Landon made me sick, and it was my first so it was new and weird. Kenley’s pregnancy was SO nasty. I was nauseous and sick 24/7. I had intense fatigue, and my pubic bone separated and caused the worst pain I’ve ever felt. This pregnancy has been fucking CAKE compared to the previous two. I don’t know why, but I’m not sick. I’m tired, but no where near the level I felt with K. I feel like this baby knows she needs to cut me some slack because I have been through hell, and deserve to have at least one good pregnancy.

If we choose to have the additional two children, we need a new house. We are busting at the seams as it its now. I know that we could make it work here with 2 children and our grief for the one we lost, but if we added any others we just wouldn’t have the space. So there is a lot that goes into the process. What I wouldn’t give to just get pregnant naturally. I’m so thankful that I was able to experience that with Landon. He gave me that joy, that naive joy of taking a test and seeing it say “pregnant”, the sheer joy of not knowing that bad things can happen to people who want a baby so badly. I will never forget those moments with Landon. I remember the day that created him so well, I remember buying the tests. I remember calling my mom and saying “uh I think I’m pregnant” and her response being” what do you mean you THINK you’re pregnant!”. I’m so thankful I got to surprise Shane that one time. I love those memories so much.

My mind has been a busy battle ground lately. I’m so sad and so happy at all times.

I don’t know how I get through every day.

711

wave of light.

Posted by

3

Tomorrow is the big day – My little sisters wedding. It’s been a long time in the making, and we’ve busted our asses getting it all set up. I love how it has turned out, and I cannot wait to be there tomorrow to celebrate with her! She set up a table in memorial for her fiancés brother who passed away, and Kenley. It is beautiful, and it made me cry. I’m so thankful that she included our sweet girl.


Tomorrow is also another big day – Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day.

At 7 pm around the world in all time zones you are asked to light a candle in memory of all the babies and children gone too soon. I’m asking you to light a candle for my sweet girl, Kenley, tomorrow evening. If you do this, I also would love to see a picture of it. If you know me, and know my phone number, text me. If you follow me on IG, upload it and tag me, or DM it to me. If you don’t know any of those things and you still want to show me the candle you lit for my sweet girl, send it through my contact page here.

I hope that many of you will participate in this tomorrow not only for our sweet girl, but for all her little friends that were taken too soon.

13934896_538369889685000_8033076690101095876_n

random.

Posted by

11

I think today is going to be a post of a bunch of random things because I can’t really think of a way to put them into an organized post…so here goes nothing.

• I’m participating in the capture your grief social media photo prompt challenge. I really enjoy writing all of my feelings out, even when they don’t make sense or come off super bitchy. I don’t mean them to come off that way, but it seems like they do. It doesn’t make me worried that they’re offending people because that’s not the point of the photo challenge, it’s to express your feelings. I think it’s very helpful for me. I didn’t think I would be able to do it, honestly. I thought that I would just cry every single day when I went to post, but I’m handling it pretty well. I’m proud of myself.

• Yesterday was my birthday. I knew it was going to suck (emotionally) strictly because it was supposed to be so different than it actually was. I was supposed to have my beautiful almost 10 month old daughter with me. I don’t really know how I expected the day to go had she been here, but she wasn’t here and it sucked- bottom line. Shane and Landon bought me flowers, and cards so that was super nice. Shane spent the day hanging our new bathroom light fixture, and installed two new dimmer switches in the house. We had a nice dinner with Landon and watched Harry Potter. It was a nice day, just a sad one.

• Landon LOVES Harry Potter. I mean, he asks to watch it every night. We are already on the Goblet of Fire. I don’t see his interest slowing down any time soon. He even asked to be Harry for halloween. My heart is so full! (We are mega HP nerds here…) After Shane and I found out we were pregnant, we took a trip to Orlando and went to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. It was the first place that Kenley went when she existed. I was so happy to know that she was with me then.

• I’ve spent way too much time in front of the TV the past day or so watching news about the Hurricane. I mean…like WAY too much time. I find it very interesting, honestly. I’ve been watching clips from Haiti and there are children standing next to rushing water. Uh…maybe don’t stand so close???? It gives me serious anxiety!

• This morning we got Landon up and ready for school. We watched him get on the bus, and then came back inside. When I walked in, Shane yelled “hey wanna watch tv in bed for a little bit?”. UM. YES. So we laid in bed, watched the weather channel, had breakfast in bed, and ended up falling asleep. It was such a nice relaxing morning. I do not remember the last time I felt that relaxed. I didn’t roll my ass out of bed until 12:40! It was amazing.

• Next weekend my little sister is getting married. I’m hoping to be able to head to my hometown in the middle of the week next week. We’ll see what happens with Shane’s work schedule, but it would be nice for all of us to “get away” for a little bit, even if it is going to be hectic.

• I can feel myself maybe falling back into a slump? I’m not sure exactly what it is that I’m feeling, but I have been putting off house work again, and just feeling like I want to sleep all the time. I know it very well could be the fact that I’m pregnant, but it doesn’t feel that way. I dunno. I guess I’ll just keep an eye on it. What does that even mean? I guess i’ll just wait and see how much more laundry builds up and I will equate that to how I’m feeling emotionally? Ugh.

• and last but not least…we went to Lowe’s on Wednesday while Landon was in school. We walked through the paint, and picked out a few colors for this baby’s room. We had talked about what colors we wanted to look at, so…I decided that since I have officially hit my 2nd trimester (already…) that I would look. So, there’s that.

 

fall. 

Posted by

1

I know that every holiday is going to suck, probably forever. Sure, the suckage might lessen as the years drone on and on, but they will always be missing our family member. My sweet girl will always be a “what if” for me. What would I have dressed her in this year for Halloween? 

You know, I can’t even answer that because my heart won’t let me think about it. It hurts way too fucking much. It stings. It’s like someone stabbing me over and over in this open wound that I call my heart now. 

No matter what it’s always going to be painful. 

Tonight, we went to get pumpkins. Landon chose two pumpkins for both of his sisters. He has a heart old gold, that boy. He also chose a super small decorative pumpkin and said that it was  “just incase I have a brother some day”.  He had such a good time and loved looking at all the fall things this place had to offer. 

I, however, could not help but be sad I wasn’t pushing her in a stroller, or giving her a small sip of apple cider to see her little face pucker up. 

These things, these normal everyday things, that “regular” people take for granted are so painful. I know I took them for granted with Landon, for sure. Hell yes I took them for granted- I never in a million years thought there would EVER be a reason I should feel otherwise. 

But, now that it’s fall, my heart is still broken and my arms are still empty, I can’t help but realize how much I’ve taken for granted with Kenley. 

I would love to be inconvenienced by anything Kenley related, besides her death. I would give up my life to hear her cry just once; to hear her take a breath of the air she will never breathe. 

I just wanted to buy you a pumpkin…and be able to see you hold it. 

But, instead, it will sit on the front porch with all the others- untouched by your beautiful little hands. 

And seeing that? That will break my heart all over again. 

weekend.

Posted by

7

This weekend was my little Sister’s Bachelorette “day” out. We went on a luncheon cruise (where everyone drank amazingly delicious smelling sangria) and listened to a DJ play some serious wedding tunes. It was really relaxing and enjoyable, even if I did feel like I wanted to yack once or twice. Thanks motion sickness! Afterward we went and got pedicures, and walked around an outdoor mall for a while.

All in all it was a pretty awesome day, and I’m really happy I was able to come home for the weekend and spend it with my sister (and the other bridesmaids).

When I got back to my Mom’s, I was beat. I guess being almost 31 (ugh. ugh ugh ugh.) will do that to you! Ha- just kidding. I know 31 isn’t “old” in the grand scheme of things life, but holy shit…I feel old now. After Kenley died, I immediately aged 10 years physically, and probably 50 years emotionally/mentally. I feel like I look old, I feel like I have no desire to do much of anything (hello depression, you nasty bitch) but I try to make myself look presentable (usually fail pretty well at this and end up in mascara and leggings). I have to force myself to enjoy things (also fail). I have tension headaches a lot these days, and I can feel the anxiety heavy in my chest. Sometimes, I will have an extra anxiety ridden day and I can literally feel it in my sternum. I have the need to crack my chest; until I make it happen, I have an excruciating pain where I can’t stand up straight and taking a deep breath is like knives in my chest.

Anyway, back to this weekend.

Landon has been sick for 50 years (read: 1.5 weeks-ish) and I just figured it was seasonal allergies, or a mild cold. He started to get pretty lethargic and stuff last week so I kept an eye on it and told myself if he wasn’t better soon that I would make an appointment. Saturday he complained of a headache all day, and over night he came into my bedroom screaming and hyperventilating saying that his head hurt so bad on the right side. I tried to calm him down, ended up giving him some Motrin and he laid with him until he fell back to sleep. In the morning he came into my room at 6am complaining again. I got up, and fed him breakfast and we watched Spongebob in the dark until about 7:30. He then started crying and freaking out about his head again.

I didn’t know what to do and honestly he was starting to scare me. I told my mom that I needed to take him to the ER so off we went. Long story short no strep, no ear infection, no anything. They gave me a script for Sudafed- a decongestant. I’m not sure how this will help his intense head pain?…but I’m no doctor. I’m going to keep a really close eye on it, and the second he complains again about his head we’re going to get a CT scan. I don’t really talk about it too much, but when Landon was 3 we had something similar happen to him. He ended up needing an Electroencephleogram (An electroencephalogram (EEG) is a test used to detect abnormalities related to electrical activity of the brain. This procedure tracks and records brain wave patterns. Small metal discs with thin wires (electrodes) are placed on the scalp, and then send signals to a computer to record the results.) because he was having super weird twitches and making random noises all the time. I was pretty sure that he had Tourettes or something.

Turns out he was ok, but has “extra electrodes (or neurons? I can’t remember) firing in his brain” and for people with this, 50% of them have a 50% chance of having a seizure at some point in their life time. So…technically not ok? But again…not a doctor here.  Also they mentioned that children with these extra whatever’s firing are often “gifted”. That’s about the only part that makes sense. If you know Landon at all, you will probably more than likely agree the kid is super fuckin smart.

Ask him anything about Dinosaurs, I dare you.

We got back to my Mom’s, packed our stuff up and went to visit my Dad for a little while. As we were leaving my Dad’s, Shane text me and said he just got breaking news on his phone that there was a shooting on I-71 near the Polaris area.  The Highway Patrol had shut down both north and southbound lanes of the highway, so I figured I would be stuck in traffic. Well,  when I got to the I-71 on ramp in Mansfield, it was a shit show. The traffic lights were all out, there were no cops there to direct traffic because they were all at the crash scene of the shooter literally 2 miles up the road. Landon and I got some lunch, and hung out in the car for a little while to watch the traffic nightmare.

I googled and found out that the shooter had shot a man 6 times from a park bench (wtf is wrong with people?) as he was walking back to this car from the restroom at the rest stop. He then hopped in his car, and drove north. The cops found his vehicle on 71 and chased him north of the Mansfield exit where he ran over spike strips and hit the guardrail. He then shot and killed himself in his car.

I was watching the highway as we ate lunch, and I saw the cars that are pictured in the news article I linked to speeding down the highway toward the crash sight. It’s insane to me how close I was to actually witnessing this high speed chase. Thank god I didn’t. Once I got on 71 South, there was no issue and we made it home pretty quickly (1.5 hrs).

So now I’m home and curled up in bed with Shane. What a long weekend!

Here’s hoping that Landon feels better, I feel better and Shane doesn’t catch what we have.

Also, I’m participating in the “capture your grief” photo challenge for the month of October which is Pregnancy and Infant Loss awareness month. If you don’t know what it is,  head on over to my Instagram page (see the side of my blog for the link) and check it out. It’s amazing, and I know that it is such an important thing for myself to do. It helps me to honor my sweet girl, and keep her memory alive.

You can also see a new photo of my beautiful Kenley. I am so in love with her face.

 

 

38+4

Posted by

5

Today is another rough day.

Today, the amount of time that has passed since you died, is the amount of time you were alive.

Tomorrow you will be gone longer than you were with us.

I don’t think there are words to describe the way that I’m feeling.

The only thing that I feel like doing or saying is screaming from the top of my lungs that I love you.  That I am your Mother. That you are my Daughter. That you were taken away from our family. That I will always ache for your presence in my life. And that I will never be whole again.

 

rough day.

Posted by

6

Our Molly Bear came today. I had to call the post office and ask them to hold it there for me so I could pick it up early because Shane had to be at work before our mail usually gets here.

We went to the post office about 9 am and there it sat. A huge white box, just staring back at me; I almost cried just looking at it. When we got home, Shane cut the tape on the box and we opened it. Immediately I cried. When I opened the box, my beautiful Kenley bear was looking back at me. She is perfect. I don’t think I could have made a better bear for us had I done it myself.

image1image2

When I held the bear, I cried. I knew that I would probably lose it, and I was right. She was heavy- 7lbs 5oz- but, that’s what Kenley weighed at birth. It just feels weird to feel her weight in my arms again. Shane held her for a little while, and we talked about it. We said how perfect she was over and over. We said that Landon is going to love her, and want to play with her.

Then, Shane asked if I wanted to go in her room.

We took the bear, and we went in.

I haven’t been in her room since…April 29th. It was so hard. I mean, hard in the way that your chest gets tight, and you can’t breathe. You cry the same kind of tears you cried at the hospital when your baby was born silent; when your whole world came crashing down around you within seconds and you didn’t know how you would ever survive.

We sat there for a while, and just talked about her room. About how beautiful it is, about her clothing, and the “why her” conversation happened again. I cried more. Going in was extremely hard, but I feel so calm in her room. We decided to look through her drawers, and closet. We looked at all of her clothing. We looked in her memory box from the hospital. We opened the envelope that has a lock of her hair. Her beautiful dark brown auburn colored hair. She had so much hair, my sweet girl.

Then, I asked Shane to open her diaper bag. This bag hasn’t been opened in nearly 9 months. I haven’t looked in there with a semi-clear mind, so I wanted to look. We pulled everything out, smelled it, looked through her baby book and sorted out what we wanted to keep specifically for Kenley, and what we could reuse for this baby. There were two outfits that Kenley didn’t wear in the hospital so we kept those out, but the rest is in the diaper bag still. image3

Today was a really hard day. I feel like I ran a marathon on the beach in cement boots.

I just really miss my baby girl.

We put her 2 quilts, and 1 crocheted blanket into the hope chest, along with the diaper bag and all the items we kept in there. It’s a step. It’s a huge step. I know that this room is going to be our new little girl’s room, and I need to work through a lot of stuff before I’m comfortable with that. It breaks my heart to think about taking her nursery apart, but it also breaks my heart to think about leaving it the same. It’s just not fair. No mother should ever have to think about these things.

Someday’s I feel absolutely insane. I don’t know how I’m going to make it through the next 25ish weeks.

NT.

Posted by

2

Tomorrow we have our NT scan and first official MFM/OB appt. I’m nervous, but not much.

I’m a little scared because I stopped my PIO, and my estrogen, and haven’t been back for a scan since…It freaks me out to think that something could have gone wrong after I stopped those medications. I’m trying to have control over my mind and control over the fear, but well…lets me honest now.

The appointment is at 12:20, then my OB appointment is in the same place just at 1:45. I have my Mother in Law coming to get Landon off the bus if needed.

If all looks well in my scan tomorrow, and we get a good picture of our girl, I’m going to post it here. I wanted to let all of the loss moms know, just incase you were having a bad day, or will be having a bad day tomorrow. I feel as if I owe it to this baby to be excited for her (obviously I am, but it’s complicated…) so I’m going to try and do one thing every few days that makes me a little uncomfortable. Posting her ultrasound photo will be that thing. I posted photos of EVERYTHING when I was pregnant with Kenley, and this baby deserves to be loved just the same.

(I have to repeat this in my head daily. Losing Kenley has greatly altered my emotional state)

I hate this. I hate every second of the way I have to live my life now.

I am trying.

Little Miss, I can’t wait to see you on your ultrasound tomorrow. Please dance up a storm and make it hard for the tech to see you, so we can see you longer (but make sure to let her get all the measurements and pictures she needs!) .

 

 

shipped.

Posted by

4

Today has been a rough day. Shane asked me how I was feeling about “little miss”, and it sort of just opened flood gates. We ended up talking about her for a long time. We talked about Kenley, her nursery, the new baby, and a bunch of stuff. I told him I was thinking about going into her room today, but ultimately I decided that I didn’t want to/wasn’t ready. He asked me if I wanted to start putting things into her hope chest, and I just lost it.  Cue all the tears, for the rest of the day.

No, I don’t want to put her stuff in the box. I WANT her to be here so she can use it. I want to never have known this level of pain, and heartache. I want to be naive about pregnancy, and never suffer 2 miscarriages, and a stillbirth. I want to not feel sad/guilty/depressed every second of every day even on my good days.

I know that nothing will ever bring Kenley back, and I know that I am doing a lot better with processing her death but quite frankly it just fucking sucks.

The whole thing sucks. 

I want to be excited for this new baby; we worked our asses off to get her. I am happy and excited to be pregnant, but it is overshadowed. I am trying— I say this so much that I sound like a broken record. I’m having a hard time thinking about this new baby using the swing that was purchased for Kenley. I know that it probably seems like a trivial thing for some people, but those people probably don’t truly understand. The items that we purchased for Kenley were burned into our minds as “her things”.

We dreamed of bringing her home from the hospital, and laying her in the rock n’ play my friend bought for her.

We dreamed of bringing her home and dressing her in one of the adorable outfits we specially bought for her.

We envisioned laying her in her crib, the one that we spent so long researching.

I dreamed of her doing tummy time on her bright yellow chevron rug (that I spent way too much money on- but didn’t care because, anything for her, right?)

I never in a million years expected to not have her here with me. I never thought for one second that I would have a nursery full of brand new items, never to be used by the intended child. But, instead, I have to process my grief and allow a new baby to use these items. I know that sounds weird, even as I type it my rational brain is screaming out–but my loss mom brain…well…that part of my brain gets it. That part of my brain understands the true depths of my pain. That part of my brain will always be fucked up now.

So the way it stands is that one half of my brain is always going to be living in fear or something terrible happening, and a huge chunk of my heart is pretty much broken and dead.

I’ve spent the evening googling “what to do with a nursery after stillbirth”… I bet your evening was better…

As I was sobbing and reading through multiple websites, I received an email.

Our Molly Bear has shipped…with 2 day shipping.

The bear will be here before 38+4…

I know that Kenley was looking out for me, and wanted to make sure the bear got here before the day when she has been gone for longer than she was alive.

I love you baby girl. You give me the strength to wake up everyday. I wish I could be holding you, smelling your sweet baby smell right now.

honor.

Posted by

5

Somedays I wake up and I don’t get regular clothes on (I must not tell lies). I smack on the yoga pants, a t-shirt and call it a day. Those days I don’t usually put on my Kenley necklace. Somedays it doesn’t even phase me, but some days it really bugs me. Some days I feel like if I don’t wear that necklace, I am not honoring my girl. It’s like I feel as if I’m “forgetting” her if I don’t wear it. I know that’s stupid, and I know that wearing my necklace here in my house isn’t making me any closer to Kenley. I can’t get any closer to her- I’m her mother. I am the one who loves her more than anything in this world.

Sometimes I feel like, as a loss mom,  I look for ways to honor my daughter that are above and beyond. Like, somehow if I take my love for her above and beyond, she will be able to feel that extra love. I know it’s not true, I know that she knows I love her, and that I would do anything in my power to have her here if it was possible. It’s just another way that losing a child fucks your brain up. It sucks. It’s sad. It hurts. It’s depressing knowing that no matter what I do to honor my girl, it’s just not going to matter when it comes to saving her.

I couldn’t save her.

Maybe honoring her by wearing her necklace, taking care of her tree, making things for other loss moms, makes me feel closer to her. Maybe it makes me feel like I’m caring for her, even though she is not here. I’m not sure what it is exactly. I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels this way.

There are other things that I do now that I need to do every day because I feel like if I stop, it’s one more step away from my girl. Now that we have our hope chest I know that I should take small steps to start putting things in there. I have a shoe box of random things from our bedroom that are related to her, and it’s sitting on my dresser. I think the first step in this whole “hope chest” thing will be putting that shoe box in there.

I don’t know if you’re like me, but when I clean something up I always end up getting sucked into it and looking at it again. Usually tying to clean one thing quickly takes a full day and will get me so off track. I know the second I step into her room and start to unpack that diaper bag, I’m going to fall apart into a million pieces. I haven’t looked at her blanket from the hospital, or the hat. I haven’t re-read her 25% finished baby book that will never be 100% finished. There are so many things that I want to look at, but know that I am not strong enough for yet.

Next Tuesday is 38 weeks. Next Saturday is 38+4, the length of time I carried her. Sunday she will be gone longer than she was alive, and that’s a real gigantic mind fuck.

Maybe next week I will find the strength to go in her room. I don’t know. Maybe not.

Probably not.