The Pink Ones...

A window of opportunity arose this afternoon for me to have some time alone, and gladly I took it. Thanks Erik for taking the kids to "training camp" with the grandparents.

While I had said time, I took my near daily trip to my favorite store with the big red bullseye...and while there I felt such a pit in my gut as I walked around. It was so hard to focus on what I was trying to find and I just ended up wandering for awhile, aimless in destination. (Wandering, however, is a very common ailment at the store with the big red bullseye...or so I hear from my discussions with other friends.) After a bit of wandering and finding some new thank you notes, it became increasingly apparent to me that my heart was missing my sweet baby girl immensely and I knew that I needed to go and "see" her at the cemetery.

First I stopped off at the flower shop to buy some flowers. When the nice lady asked me what I wanted, I said, "I need two roses by themselves and five in a bunch." And the tears started to flow...and I couldn't hold them back. My body was shuddering as I thought of the reason for my intended purchase. The nice lady wondered which color I wanted and I pointed and said, "the light pink ones." She said, "oh, I can't sell those because they are for a wedding...but I have some other pink ones right here that I just bought and they will be beautiful." They were indeed beautiful, but they were a bit darker in color...and I so wanted those lovely light ones, the same shade of light pink we had a few weeks prior for Solveig's burial...light pink and delicate like my delicate daughter. But I decided it wasn't something for me to fuss over and that the deeper shade of pink would be suitable for today's purpose. After the lady brought the flowers up, she whispered something to the other nice lady in the shop and I figured what she was saying must have been something about this being for my child and to cut me a deal. I explained to nice lady #2 my crying eyes and red puffy cheeks..."one rose is for my daughter's grave and the other is for the little girl buried next to her (the daughter of my friend). And the five other pink roses are for me to bring home." (5 for the 5 of us, including Solveig...maybe there really should be 7 since I have those two miscarried little ones in Heaven too...it's not that I don't think about them, because I do...but the weight of her loss was so intense since I carried her longer and I birthed her and I held her...) The nice lady who rang up my purchase told me that she had lost two children as well - one had passed 12 hours after birth - she understood my loss on a very personal level. And she looked at me with tears in her eyes and told me that it is still hard to this day, but she said, "I want to encourage you to enjoy your days here. Your child would want that for you. It will take awhile, but you'll get there." That meant a lot coming from her.

I felt encouraged after leaving the flower shop. And the drive to the cemetery was full of a similar nervousness as the day we buried our Solveig...but when I pulled into the driveway for the tiny little country cemetery, I felt such a relief. As I walked up to her grave, the freshly raked dirt was still there a few weeks after her burial. And it felt so real and so raw again...and I sobbed and missed her so deeply. I laid a rose first on tiny B's grave next to my Solveig and then one on Solveig's grave. I crouched down near the grave and cried and thought for awhile about the tiny little love who was resting just a few feet underneath me. If you've lost a child, perhaps you can relate to the urge to want to dig up the ground and see the body one more time...that's kind of how I feel when I go there...but it's not something I'd ever do, it's just something that crosses my mind and probably is a very normal maternal, primal instinct. Obviously, I know she is very much gone...and her sweet spirit is with Jesus...

The sun was shining today and the warmth of the sun on my shoulders was so soft and tender. It was like Jesus was reaching down from Heaven and holding me close...reassuring me that my precious girl was safe in His care. I felt an immense peace and I was able to breathe again.

Thank you Lord, for the reminders of you today...and thank you for taking care of my Solveig until I can hold her again...and for holding little B too while her mommy misses her too...