Scars

It finally happened. It was week three of E's life with us. I was riding in the back seat with her, B driving. One of our first errands out. As I gazed out the back seat window I realized. Bremy. I hadn't thought of Bremy. It had been a day. I knew it wasn't two days because there had been a conversation about her then. But one day. A whole day had passed where she did not enter my mind. I didn't see her as I drifted off to sleep. Didn't tighten at the thought of her. Didn't swallow and refuse the tears. I'll admit, I never thought this would happen.

I just sat there and stared at E, sleeping peacefully in her car seat. Riding in the car we had bought thinking we'd have a child in it one day. And instead of tears came a smile and a deep breath and a feeling of my heart literally filling. A warmness I'd been yearning for. I didn't feel the huge hole. I didn't feel the brokenness.  My heart was being pieced back together by this beautiful little girl.

There have been several times where we see Bremy in her face. Or stare at her footprints on E's nursery wall. But it's so much less painful now that E is here. Instead of raw pain, there's a certain allowance to the memory. I'm not so sure how to explain it. Almost a feeling of true acceptance of her loss. She's gone and it happened. And now E has happened and somehow that makes the story easier to tell and easier to accept. It also makes it easier to skip a day. To not be consumed by the trauma and sadness. B and I both had some tears a few days ago when we heard a story similar to ours. It was hard to hear of anyone else suffering the way we had. I did cry. But then I stopped. And I felt better. Skipping a day doesn't mean we will forget, or that it will stop hurting, it just means a scar has formed where a gaping hole once was. And that scar feels a lot better.