The lump in my throat

Before we even knew there were two

I feel like it's always there, whether I realize it or not. I can be totally happy one minute, and the next I'm ready to cry my eyes out. That lump in my throat.

I was in the car with my SIL today, telling her about my research on perinatal grief. We got to talking about how losing Conner and Ben might have been different from people who lost their babies say, at one month old, six years old, etc.

It is totally different.

And it is completely the same.

I would never say that losing Conner and Ben is the same experience as losing an older child. If I lost Jordan, that would be a different experience than losing her brothers. But it is the same.

As a mother, once you are pregnant, those babies are yours. You love them, you want them, you take care of them, you have dreams for them. You build your whole future for them.  And if you lose those babies, it's not like you never had them. You did. In my case, my boys were handed to me, breathing and living, and then they were gone. No matter how long I had them for, those were still my babies.  It was no different, my SIL said, than if she woke up the next morning and did not have her kids anymore.

But that concept is really hard for other people to understand. The experience of losing Conner and Ben so early is different than later losses, but that love is the same. I lost two babies who were, who are, very real.

I could feel that lump in my throat right then, and I wanted to cry. But I swallowed it. I didn't know why I was so emotional - because I was touched that my SIL was so understanding of all of this, or because I missed my boys so much and I rarely get to express that anymore. Probably a bit of both. But, in a way, that feeling was comforting. I am blessed with a wonderful family and happy life, but I do not want to lose sight of what was lost. I love that I can talk about the boys and feel happy when I think about them. But at the same time, I don't ever want to be so far from this loss that I cannot feel it anymore. My boys are a part of me and they have shaped me in so many ways. They are the best things to happen to me, but their deaths were the worst. And while I feel nothing but love and happiness when I think about them, sometimes I just want to be able to grieve.

“Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.” 

― Leo Tolstoy