shadows

john and my mom have gone to bed. it is eerily quiet in my living room and pepper is itching to get into the bedroom but the door is closed. pepper is our fraidy dog.. when something is the least bit unsettled (thunder, a loud commercial, john or myself bickering or complaining about something), he slips into the bedroom where it's safe. something is telling him to go into the bedroom right now, though the only sound is my typing and shifting on the couch. he can feel it. it's scary in here. a preview of my lonely nights when john is back and work and my mom has made her way back to texas. im not ready to go back to work... not physically or emotionally. so here i am on the couch, alone, with no baby and a room full of unsettled grief... thick enough for my dog to sense. deputy, on the other hand, is snoring away at my feet, in all of his loyal, carefree fluff. deputy doesnt know heartache, i envy him.

i am thinking about all my shadow babies.. they are babies who were born around the time another baby has died. there are 4 who are dear to me.. two from work (one baby girl who was due the same day as kathlyn and born july 29, the day before), one from church, and my closest friend's baby, not due til october, but her mommy is so dear to my heart that the arrival of her daughter will be extremely hard on me. tonight john and my mom and i went for a walk, it was after dark like always, and as we rounded one corner of our neighborhood, there it was.. not every house has a streetlight in front, but this one happened to. amongst the shadows, a stork, with fancy blue balloons, illuminated by the streetlight, announcing the joyous arrival of a neighbor's baby boy, a neighbor we dont know and probably never will, except that if kathlyn had lived, we might have crossed paths having babies who are 3 weeks apart. if not walking the neighborhood and comparing strollers or chasing wobbly feet around at the pool, they would have probably started kindergarden together in 2014. i dont just miss my newborn baby. i miss my clumsy toddler and my 5 year old school girl.

we had lunch after church with that shadow baby. she is part of the Rock Group. she is a joy, just darling and so well behaved. i cried the night i met her, i was 34 weeks, and thinking "im next!" it is so, so very hard to be around her and her parents are so sweet and well aware how hard it is, but they are our friends and we are grieving our loss, not their happiness. they are grieving right along with us. at lunch, the baby's carseat was nestled next to her mommy on the booth. i just wanted my carseat next to me too. even if empty, i wanted people to see two cute couples who appeared to both have new babies, out and about on a sunday after church together for pizza. i could have just closed the top of the carseat and no one would know it was empty.. my baby is just sleepy and well behaved and never makes a sound.

that's crazy. insane. who brings an empty carseat to a restaurant after their baby dies? but im not alone. nothing is too crazy for a mommy who has suffered the loss of her child. after thinking those thoughts, i read about a mommy who said she just about took her empty stroller for a walk the other day, rather than facing her neighbors who expected that she'd have a baby and wonder why she was walking alone. just let them see me walking with a stroller like im suppossed to be, and everything will be fine.

while still at church, baby KG looked right at me. she is only 8 weeks old, but she is alert and we made eye contact from several feet away. it made my face smile though my heart was breaking. dont be sentimental, i thought, that is KG looking at you, not KJ's spirit using her shadow baby to say hello. mind you, they both have blue eyes, sweet little lips and round cheeks. they were both born in room 14 at CMC university. due in early august and early july, they were born before their due dates in late july and late june respectively. both 7lb, 1 ounce, and 20 inches, delivered both by the fabulous doctors of the same practice. the same first initial, and both with a middle name about life. sometimes coincidences are nice.

at the restaurant, when waking from a nap, KG's eyes caught mine again and i said "i see you lookin at me!" as she smiled, a big smile and the sweetest little coo, that made everyone at the table give a collective awwww. "why dont you do that when i have my camera ready", said her daddy, leading me to believe that she doesnt smile that often yet, not often enough to capture it in a photo easily. she went back to sleep after not much time.

kathlyn, if you had anything to do with that, thank you, mommy loves you so much. go ahead and use those shadow babies to bring yourself to me whenever you want, to let me know you're still my baby, safe and happy and joyous and graceful and a beautiful ray of sunshine amongst the shadows somewhere.

if it wasnt her, so what. im thinking of her every second anyway. sometimes coincidences are just nice.