if you could keep me floating, just for awhile, i'll get back to you

i've had such strong mixed emotions the past few days. being back at work in full swing, back to 12 hour days, helping out on other floors, step by step, the days are starting to go by a little faster. melody had her baby, and i really dont think ive ever felt so torn between happiness, sadness, pure love and blinding anger in my life. i had a conversation with her this morning, i told her she has been so extra sweet the past few days, that i can tell that having a baby made her love more deeply, just like it did for me. except that i have such heartbreak and devastation with mine. but she apparently had a very good experience with her nurses, so she thanked me, and john, for having jobs where we give so much of ourselves to help others. she also put lorelei in one of kathlyn's outfits... her very first outfit she ever wore, less than two hours after birth. melody knows how much that stuff means to me. she said she is "thrilled out of her mind" for that baby girl. and she said she immediately understood my pain so much more when she first heard her daughter cry as her husband carried her into melody's view. she can imagine nothing, absolutely nothing worse now, than losing her. she is a miracle. just an amazing miracle, as they all are. i have been studying her features on my fuzzy little cell phone text message photo of her in kathlyn's pink lambie sleeper. a miracle, that is all i keep thinking when i look at her. a living, pink little baby, with a beating heart, a chest that rises and falls, nothing short of a miracle.

my coworker got married yesterday. john had the night off, we got all fancied up, and off we went. but we had both worked the night before, and left with no time to spare to get there. so when we made a wrong turn, that made us late. i have NEVER been late for a wedding before, i always leave with enough time to get there way early. i felt terrible because it had already started when we got there. we sat in the back, which was ok, i dont mind being discrete, but i could see all of my other coworkers in front of me, they were all so happy, along with a baby girl directly in my view who couldnt have been a month old. i had planned to bring kathlyn with me to this wedding, i had picked out a cute little fall dress for the event. it was the last outift i ever bought for her. (i wrote about thishere .) when the ceremony ended, i saw a coworker who looked just about as happy as a human could be, said hello, and beelined for the back door. i said to john "i cant do this", we found a bench, and i just cried and cried. my sister in law told me to fake it until i make it. but at times like this i just feel like im not gonna make it. i get tired of faking it. my heart doesnt remember how to celebrate. i had no tissues ith me (how did THAT happen??), so i used kathlyn's bib, the one that matches the outfit i bought, which i brought with me to honor her. john said "no! you're gonna ruin it!" and i said "well what OTHER use does it have?!?!" i think it's appropriate. it's all tear soaked and mascara stained now. i should know better not to wear makeup ANYWHERE. but what better use for kathlyn's bibs than for her mother's tears..

so on the way home, i called my wonderful christina from rock group. she knew how upset i was, and since john never ever has saturdays off, she arranged for us all to have dinner together. it was so nice how last minute everyone was able to get together to support us. i saw my sweet baby kylie again. it's amazing how much a baby that i dont know can upset me like the one at the wedding, but how much kylie has come to mean to me. she's my little shadow baby, as lorelei will be. christina was sitting next to me, and across the table from me sat sweet bria, our pastor's 1 year old daughter, on the lap of her pregnant mother. i looked at kylie's mom and said "it's going to be a long year." just one more year, one more year, one LONG year, until i can hopefully, hopefully, hopefully with all my broken heart's wishes, hopefully have a baby on my lap too. as i looked from family to family, at all these babies, a dave matthew's quote rang in my head.... "what i want is what i've not got, but what i need is all around me."