Looking Back

17 months. It's been 17 months since Colden died. I try to picture having a living 17 month old child and my imagination fails me. To survive, to walk through each day, I have distanced myself from the babylost community that formed a substantial portion of my lifeline early on. I can't focus on the pain or I am engulfed in it. That's just my way. I'm not saying it's in any way a good way, even for me, much less for anyone else.

But yesterday in the shower I had a strong urge to blog again after many months. I often have my deepest thoughts in the shower as my mind drifts in a nearly dream-like state. Yesterday I was thinking about how I had made it this far, or really why I had made it this far. I thought about the statistics I get each week on the decent numbers of visits to my blog, even though it's largely inactive. I imagine the new members of this awful club reading these inadequate words looking for answers, for any kind of solace, and I wanted to reflect on what it meant to be nearly a year and a half out from loss.

Immediately after Colden died I was very close to suicidal in that I didn't want to live. I wasn't ever close to acting, frankly I didn't have the energy and if I was sad about losing my child how could I do that to my own mother? But I thought I wanted to let go. I thought about random accidents a lot and wished for something to happen to me so that it wouldn't be my doing. I thought I really meant it. I sincerely could not picture feeling better or enjoying life.

Around this time I went out with B and some friends to go climbing. Climbing was my old passion and I didn't feel like going, but there I was. I was walking across a frozen pond and it started cracking very loudly and I dropped through a 6 inch layer of ice. I hit another layer of ice below, but for a few seconds I thought I was going under. In that cheese-ball way that you see in movies, those few seconds lasted ages and I thought again about my own death. To my surprise I did not want it. I actually shouted out to B across the lake that I did not want to die. I'm sure he could hear the surprise in my voice.

That incident has stuck with me. It made me realize that I was still attached to this life so my only real option was to embrace it each day as best I could. I may not like the choices I have available, but I still have to make them as they come along. Eat or don't eat? Talk to a friend or hide? Sink or swim? So far I've managed to get out of bed each day, to go to work, to mostly keep doing thinks I enjoy, to love my husband, my cat, and my family. And what's more, one of those things dishonors Colden or the life we would have preferred to live. (That last one seems so obvious now, but it really wasn't clear to me then.)

So what the hell am I trying to say? I don't want to sound preachy here and hell if I'm saying life goes back to normal, but it does get better. There is pain, sadness and tears, but there is also light, laughter and love. Most days I seek the light.