One Month

Dear Nora,

One month without you has felt simultaneously like the longest and shortest month of my life. Each day has been painfully long, each night restless, but the collective whole has seemingly gone by in a blur. I think our forever will now be marked this way. The time that came before you and now, the after. The week, month, year after and so on. Maybe we won’t always know the exact mark of time it is after, but it will forever be after. None of us will ever be the same and I will continue to miss you all the time. I still sleep with the blanket you were wrapped in most every night. Sometimes I can tell daddy needs it so I slide it over or insist he hold it. It smells sweet like you and I don’t know how it’s held onto that perfect smell for so long, but for that I am so grateful. Some nights it feels as though your weight is in that blanket; like it’s you I’m holding which breaks my empty heart and comforts it at the same time. I wish more than anything that you were here in the chaos of our family. That you were making yourself and your opinions known over the squeals of your sisters. I wish you were here, annoyed that I was bothering you to take photos that mark your first month with us. Photos that we’d look back on later and say things like, “she still makes that face!” and “remember how dark Nora’s hair was?” and “wow, her eyes have always been so beautiful!” Instead I cried as I looked through the only photos of you we will ever have and dreamt of what color your eyes were. Blue like your Dad, Ellie and Rose or more green like mine? We will never know and it kills me a little. It seems silly, such a small thing, but with each of you that was one feature we always talked and dreamt about while I was pregnant. What will her eyes look like? Do you think they’ll be blue like the other two or will she be the one who gets my eyes, I’d ask. You can tell so much by looking at someone’s eyes. How are they feeling? Are they telling the truth? What might they be thinking? So much can be seen in the eyes of a baby, so much possibility, such big dreams. Maybe they’re dreams we have for you or maybe they’re dreams you have for yourself, but can’t yet articulate. You can always glimpse the first bits of personality in a baby’s eyes. I was so looking forward to seeing yours. I will forever imagine what it would’ve been like. 

Today, not many people said anything to me. That almost made it even more difficult. It made it feel like the world is beyond ready for us to be moving on now and not having you acknowledged today, even only in words, was so sad to me. I’m not expecting people to put monthly reminders in their agendas or anything, it was just difficult to have only the grief as acknowledgement that you were truly real. The boundless grief and extra weight I carry are proof of your beautiful existence. You were so perfect and my heart aches with you gone.

Love, Mommy

Originally written to Nora on 04.09.2021