after

the last few weekends, i have been sleeping all through the day to recover from long nights at work. by the time i get up, it's way too late to do anything or see anyone. tonight i got up early (after only 4-5 hours sleep, less than half of what i need) to go have dinner with friends. i enjoyed myself, though I miss john (who's working) and of course kathlyn. as everyone was winding down, finishing their meal, ready to go, i get more and more uneasy. i anticipate being back home, alone, with all night ahead of me and nothing to do. i want my baby.

july has been ok for me. i've been planning her memorial gathering and my mom's coming, my house will be sparkling clean once she gets her hands on it, and everything i'm doing is kathlyn centered. i do best that way.

im dreading august. most sad mommies say the days leading up to the birthday are the worst, then the actual day isnt so bad. for me, i will be nuclear winter. august means the year is over. no more firsts. it will be the "second everything without her." grief doesnt expire after a year. it just restarts. with a bang. the nuclear kind. stop. stop. right now. august can't come. it's still kathlyn's year.

just like this lonely depression is possibly worse after a nice dinner. i have nothing to do right now. i'll have nothing to do in august.

i'm still seeing my therapist twice a week, with no plans to lengthen the time between appointments anytime soon. it so tiring, expensive, and time consuming, but when there's a week without a second appointment, i panic. all i have to do is wait a few days between visits and i can go back. i can make it.

although sometimes i feel like i start out in an ok mood, and then end up drudging up all the anger and hurt when i wouldnt have otherwise needed to talk about it in that moment. she tells me that i should try to keep writing since it helped me so much in the past, but i dont write as often because i have nothing new to say and i repeat myself. but she says that is how people get through traumas... talk about it over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, and then maybe it will hurt a little less. if the anger and hurt are coming out, that means they needed to. at some point, they needed to. there's still so much of it. probably way more than 2 hours a week's worth.

on the way to my appointment this morning after work, i drove past some abortion protesters. there were signs with pretty babies that said "i was saved, my mother decided not to abort, honk for life" etc etc. and then there were the signs with pictures of aborted babies. ugh. i didnt have time to stop, but i thought maybe after the appointment i would. i talked about it some, and decided i wouldnt stop because i didnt want to get all worked up and then not be able to sleep. i didnt have to drive past them again to get home, so i knew it would be fine.

so much for that. they had spread. i did have to pass them again, so i couldnt stop myself. i pulled into a parking lot for KFC and walked my awake-for-20-hours--pregnant-sensitive--just-had-therapy--still-in-scrubs-from-last-night self up to a man with a megaphone and one with one of the disturbing signs and showed them a picture of my daughter. i said "this is my daughter" and he said "oh! how cute! how old is she?!" and i said "she's dead in this picture" and his expression of course completely dropped. i said "can you tell?" and he said "oh, yea, i can now." what the flip is that?! anyway, he's wrong. in that picture i showed, you can't tell. i told him my story and how im sensitive and discrete about showing her pictures, how i only show the ones where you can't tell anything is wrong (very, very few people have seen EVERY unretouched picture), and that his photograph is completely and utterly disturbing. they claim that it stops people from aborting, so if that's really true, then fine, you've convinced me about halfway, but i dont know if i believe it. why not show a photo of an adoptive family instead? education, instead of shock value. i asked how many people stop and complain, and he said "you're the first one... today." hah. it was 1030am. he also said no pro-life person had ever stopped to complain. i rule. i give them credit though. he asked to say a prayer for me and he prayed for my little birdie :)

one thing that struck me was when i said we don't know what happened to our daughter, he said "i dont know either, but i know God is good." good for him not making a claim about a plan or a reason for everything. God is good. one of my new good friends had her rainbow-after-the-storm baby today after a rocky pregnancy. her son is doing great! :) she's getting lots of uplifting comments, such as "God is so good!"

That He is. but if He's good, He has to be good all the time. He was good for 138 other mothers today along with my friend. but that 140th mother who had a stillborn this morning.... what about her? wasn't He good for her too? isn't He there with her like He's been there for me?

I don't support abortion for any reason. I'm not ok, even after a year since my daughter's death, and I never will be. I'll never be ok with losing my little cherry. Right now, little birdie is ok. God is so good, no matter what we go through. Now, if I could only convince myself of that all the time. If I could only remember that when I'm dreading the end of dinner. Or when I'm in bed alone. Or when I'm mad at someone for innocently saying something dumb. Or all through August and year number 2 without her.