Month: August 2013

24 Months Later…
~ Day of Hope ~

~ Day of Hope ~

It’s soon 24 months  or 2 years since I gave birth to my twin daughters Ananda Mae and Amya Mirica – Hope & Passion.
A happy 2nd birthday for Ananda Mae and part of us will be sad and missing the presence of her identical twin sister…

Just today I came across an article about Jamie, a US congress woman’s baby, born in July this year with the same condition Hope was born: Potter’s syndrome.  Another mother like me who received the painful medical ‘death sentence’ while still pregnant with their baby, praying for a miracle, gathering ‘Hope’ and trying not to lose faith in the apparently impossible. I read the words of Kelly, another mother who lost her boy to Potter’s syndrome:

While I rejoice with this mother, and for the beautiful miracle of this life, the hard questions weigh on my mama heart all these years later. The goodbye stings fresh. The longing. The questions. I asked why they couldn’t just put some fluid in there. I asked why they couldn’t just get my boy a kidney. I asked. And, there were no answers for me this side of heaven. Nor, for the thousands of other parents who asked those questions. They said there was nothing they could do.

Just like Kelly I’m happy for Jamie, her husband and their daughter and hope that many babies with this condition may in future survive and live.

It is however also painful to remember the exact same questions we asked and options we discussed with the doctors while my daughters were both in NICU on their first day of life: dialysis & kidney transplant options. It’s with sadness in my heart that I hear my husband’s words: ‘Well it’s too late for our daughter’.

The article mentioned above was written end of July which is now almost a month ago. I do hope that Jamie’s daughter is alive and growing well. And I do mourn for the dreams and hope we had for our HOPE that we were never able to realise. With all the prayers for a miracles. With all the support from friends and family who also prayed for a miracle. And full heartedly I agree with Kelly again when she says:

My children, and yours. Miraculous gifts. No matter how long they were here.

 

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Unexpected Visitor: Grief
~ hello again ~

~ hello again ~

Waves and surges of deep sadness from the depth of my soul vibrated through my being when I chatted to a friend who lost her niece. In a split second I was back in the midst of my maternal grief I felt 2 years ago, feeling with the mother who had just lost her daughter.

I don’t know this woman and her daughter, besides from the photos that were shared with me. What I do know is the path of a mother who has lost her daughter, the past of grief & loss. I know that deep sadness that renders the brain and physical being incapable, barely functioning on auto-pilot, waiting to wake up from what seems like a nightmare. ‘This can’t be true’ and ‘why did this happen’… among tears streaming, just streaming endlessly. Every waking moment spent thinking about this being that no longer is alive, the daughter who was meant to live past her mother’s days.

The sadness is deep.

I think the most difficult thing in life is to accept the things inevitable, the things we can’t change no matter how much we wish it were different. Acceptance can feel harsh and cold and cruel. How ironic that acceptance, then, is the very thing that liberates and brings happiness. The only way out, is through.
~ Femke Stuut

The sadness is deep. And it needs time and space. Not to heal. But to present to. To honour the love for this being, our daughters who passed before our time.

So be sad. Be sad now and then. When ever.

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