Since the day my daughter passed, I have been surprised countless times by one question:
“What’s wrong?”
If feels like a bit of a slap in the face to my grief because losing her is always what’s wrong. Living a life without my child will always be what’s wrong. Grief does not only visit once a year, there are anniversaries that sting and milestones that hurt and days that are just hard, just because. So for anyone who is wondering what’s wrong at a time when things might seem right, here are a few things it could be:
It might be the anniversary of the day I found out I was pregnant
or the exact date, years ago, that we announced whether it was a boy or girl.
I could have come across unworn baby clothes or bumped into a child who looks like I dreamt mine would.
A baby shower invitation might have come in the mail or I found something bearing my daughter’s name.
Someone asked me how many children I have or I had to fill out a medical history form, listing a child as “deceased.”
I might not have slept enough or dropped a baby book from the top of our closet or saw something advertised on television for the date of my child’s death.
The day might have been too crazy for me to spend enough time with my daughter’s memory or too slow for me to think of anything but.
It could be anything really.
You see, my daughter is with me every single day, whether she is here or not. The reminders of her life and death do not visit only on the day she was born and the day she left my arms, they are wrapped up in every day before and after her last breath. Her memory is entwined in my life just as closely as she once grew inside me.
The loss of her precious life will always be “what’s wrong” because there is nothing in my heart that can make it right.
