from earlier this week

Wednesday, August 26, 2009 at 5:21am
here i am again in the late, late hours, awake and typing my nightly note. it's 4:40 in the morning, but dont let this fool you into thinking ive lost my ability to sleep. not so much.. i slept from 2am to 4pm yesterday, and although i am awake now, i cried myself into a nap on the couch between 12am and 2am tonight. for nearly 3 hours, i have been reading facebook messages. thanks for that.. my plea for the messages to start back up has worked.. i had 18 this time, as well as a handfull of emails and messages on my wall.

ive gotten a lot of notes about how people have almost secretly, in the way facebook allows you to do, watched me through my pregnancy, how happy i was, and now during my grief stricken darkest hours. many also tell me they sign on daily to see how im doing. for as long as i can, i will keep doing it, because it's helping me and i see it's helping a lot of you too. everyone who knows me, knows my love for children and especially babies. now all of you are learning a lot more about me, very deep into my heart, a depth that perhaps can only be reached when one is sharing the love for their child.

i say "for as long as i can" because having a facebook profile is not easy. there are lighthearted status messages everywhere, photos of children and people on their joyous paths of pregnancy like i was less than a month ago. i havent typed a smily face, an "lol", or hardly even an exclamation point since this tragedy happened. it's just not in my spirit. i used to make comments and "Beth Davis likes this" everywhere and i just dont do it anymore. maybe this will change with time. "things will get better", "it wont be this hard forever", and "new normal" are things i hear all the time, and they are true. but my fear right now is that it's about to get worse.. much worse. john goes back to work tomorrow and my mom is leaving in a week. i am scared again, so scared. i hate being alone, i always have. during my 14 hours of sleep, i woke up during the afternoon to the sound of john's keys rattling and i shot up in bed and said "where are you going??" i was panicked and started crying. i dont want him to leave. he was just going for a second to run an errand. tomorrow is different. there is another harsh reality in my life.. i am a police wife. we are a different breed. so they say "it takes a special person to be a police wife." who are "they" anyway? the raw truth is, my husband could be seriously injured or shot or hit on his bike or killed accidentally or purposely murdered at any time and tomorrow back into that he goes. but dont "they" know how fragile life is? police wife or not, i have had it violently thrown in my face how easily things can, and do, go terribly wrong, the way we never expected. in one message, a friend to me said "you have so much to teach us about all we take for granted." i havent really had to teach you anything. of all the parents who know me, or know OF me now from across the miles, who never even met me... the children of those parents have, in the past four weeks, gotten a lot of extra hugs and kisses, in exchange for all the ones i cant give kathlyn. dont forget your husbands and wives too. there are no guarantees and the one consequence of great love is grief. i feel that during my pregnancy, i was so, so stupidly happy, a time of unawareness for what was about to come. the higher you are, the harder you fall, and trust me.. i was high. it is extremely disheartening to feel that i can never allow myself to be that happy, because something might happen again. i dont want to be told im strong.. because i couldnt do this again. Please, dear God, please, i couldnt do this again. i cant even do it now.
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Beth,

I want you to know that I think of you and your loss everyday. My heart weighs heavy for you. I keep thinking that you should be slightly glazed and cloudy with sleep deprivation due to middle of the night feedings, not struggling under the wet blanket of grief. You should be complaining about sore nipples from breastfeeding for the first time, not suffering as though your heart has been ripped out of your chest. You should be overwhelmed with anxiety about how to be a mommy for the first time, not scared to live without your darling Katie by your side. You should be happier than you've ever been in your entire life reveling in the joy that is first parenthood, not sadder, more grief-stricken than any person should ever be.

I so wish I could bring all these should's to you. I know that is a futile wish for now, but I will keep hoping that someday, not too far away, you will experience all of those wonderful pains and joys of caring for an infant. Perhaps, somehow, you will feel the joys more deeply and accept the difficulties of mothering more easily when it happens for you. Maybe that can be a gift little Katie will give you when you have her little brother or sister eventually.

I realized that I nearly wrote how I wanted all these things for you when you become a mother. But you were a mother; you are a mother. And I am so sad for you that you are a mother that didn't get a chance to mother. The noun applies to you, but you were robbed of the chance to embody the verb. To be a mother without a child must be the most tragic and painful of situations.


i am a mother without the chance to mother. this is why all i feel i can do is cry and sleep. i have found my way outside of the house, and the ability to feel lighthearted does come temporarily thanks to those around me. but when i get home, i just want to cry and sleep.. the things that my baby would be doing, while i would be mothering.