Well it turns out that minivan will never ever be filled, because we sold the good old swagger wagon.
We sold it because it has almost 150,000 miles and need more repair than we were willing to pay, but we also sold it because our perspective has changed on life.
Instead of sitting around lamenting our empty mini we decided to get a more practical car for our needs. I know, I know it's just a car. But for us it was symbolic of all we have lost and it was time to start a new chapter.
A big step of our new chapter started last week when, I had a doc appointment. It had to be at the office where I last saw Claudie alive and first heard she wasn't alive. I must be walking around in some kind of grief bubble still, because it didn't even dawn on me it would as hard as it was. But it hit, HARD. As soon as I pulled up in the parking lot I started getting flashbacks. Like crazy real flashbacks on a Lifetime movie and had to blink and shake my head in hopes they would vanish. But by the time they called me in to the ultrasound room, I sat on the table I was shaking uncontrollably.
"Is something wrong," the ultrasound tech asked?
I uttered something about 38 1/2 weeks and baby and then trailed off into uncontrollable tears. All the while I was texting Dustin something fierce.
"Where are you?"
"I am in the ultrasound room."
"Are you coming?"
The ultrasound tech took it as she needed to give me reassurance of this baby right away and quickly tried to find a heartbeat. Yes, I wanted to hear a heartbeat, but really that is not what I cared about at the moment. At that moment all I could think of my sweet little curly-haired, red lipped beauty, Claudie. It was so hard to focus on the machine. Tears and shaking overtook me.
In hopes of making me feel better she turned up the heartbeat volume.
Louder. And Louder. I cried.
I couldn't stop. What became clear to me at that moment is something I have always known, this is not a replacement child.
A heartbeat on the child growing within me will never be a substitute for the one whose heart will beat no more.
I realized a part of me so wanted that to be the case, but instead a new permanency of her death was felt. Claudie will forever be gone. She cannot be replaced.
Now are plans are different, because we have discovered they aren't our plans at all, but rather Gods, so we must mold our minds and hearts around whatever new reality is given to us. To embrace it with the only certain thing we know about the future, it's uncertainty.
For now that comes in the form of selling a van, but I have a feeling that is just the beginning of many things we will have to evolve and change in the coming months...I don't even want to think about her nursery.
1 comment:
Tears. Big tears for you. You are BRAVE! Going through my pregnancy with Madeline after losing Joshua was probably the most terrifying and yet most beautiful thing I have ever done. You could have 100 more babies (though I think I would not suggest that) and not a single one of them would ever make you miss Claudie less. I do pray that this new little one growing big and strong will help heal some of the broken though.
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