Where I Am Right Now: One Year, Six Months, Twenty Seven Days | Still Playing School

Where I Am Right Now: One Year, Six Months, Twenty Seven Days

By Devany | Labels:
This post is part of the Right Where I Am Project.  
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One year, six months, and twenty seven days without Violet.  An eternity and a blink of an eye.

Yesterday, my husband and I were driving together.  We had lots of time to talk, just the two of us, without answering the endless 3-year-old inquiries from the backseat.  D was sleeping, hot and sweaty.  E was riding in a different vehicle with our family, entertaining them with her Gangnam Style dancing.  I don't remember the initial context, but Violet came up.

We began by talking about her heart.  It was turned incorrectly and in the wrong spot in her teeny, tiny chest.  He asked me to remind him of how much she weighed.  We marveled about the fact that one chromosome could mess up so much about her.  We recalled our reactions to the worst news of our lives, both from our own perspective and witnessing it in each other.  But most of all, we discussed our survival.

Reflecting back, it seems so foreign that we drove to the hospital that morning, knowing our girl would be born and begin to die.  It was a death sentence for us as well.  We knew what we were facing, yet we calmly drove together just as we were doing yesterday.  Looking at it after, we can almost imagine what our friends and family felt watching us from their slightly removed perspective.  We are just as astonished at our survival as you must be.

Yet here we are, one year, six months, and twenty seven days later.  The inevitable happened.  She took her last breath in my husband's arms with me sitting in front of her facing the both of them.  Somehow we prepared her to go to the funeral home.  Somehow we gathered our things and ourselves and left that room the next day without her.  Somehow we picked up her ashes two days later and welcomed her back into our home.  Somehow we've navigated a rainbow pregnancy and welcomed her little brother into our hearts, so different, yet so entwined with her that it takes my breath away.

I am pretty certain that I have PSTD but I have no official diagnosis yet.

I want, more than anything, for others to speak her name.  The desire for this aches inside of me.

I find her everywhere.  Just yesterday, a violet scented car air freshener for sale in a seaside souvenir shop.  The day before that, the deodorant I selected was sweet pea and violet.  My daughter has become a flower and a fragrance and a memory.

She is still my daughter.

13 comments :

  1. I shared Violet today! :D With a BLM who is 3 months in this journey. I shared that she has left her mark on your lives and that you are amazing people. And that you see her in the things around you (I told her about the Violets wall paper...). She was encouraged. <3 Thankyou for sharing her with the world...

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  2. Hoping you feel love sent to you, and hearing us speak Violet's name. <3

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  3. <3 Violet <3

    Yes, all of this! Beautifully written!! (and I too wonder if I don't have some PTSD, how can't we after all we've gone through).

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  4. Your daughter and mine share a name. Violet is my duaghter's middle name. I smiled when I read your daughter's name. I'm so sorry you are without her.It's hard to believe we've been through all that we have isn't it? Much love to you. x

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  5. Oh, that list of somehows . . . I still am astonished at doing all those things. I found a clump of wild violets still blooming in my yard today, though most have passed. Virtually saying your Violet's name and honoring her not as that flower but as you much missed baby girl.

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  6. 'my daughter has become a flower and a fragrance and a memory' is exactly how I feel Eva has become. I see her in so many things that she is not. A sunflower, the colour pink etc... but she is a girl.

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  7. I am so sorry Violet couldn't stay.

    All those somehows. All the courage and strength that it has taken for you to navigate the somehows. It is a difficult path, but know your beautiful Violet is with you every step of the way - in fragrance, in flowers, in your sorrow and in your joy.

    Thank you for speaking her name...

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  8. I'm so sorry that you are without your precious Violet. It does seem very strange and astonishing doesn't it? That we somehow survive such things. Somehow. All of my memories have a sense of unreality, I can't imagine that we did those things. It seems unimaginable.

    I'm glad you find your Violet all around you, in flowers, fragrances and memories. Always your daughter. Sending love to you and your family.

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  9. Somehow - I don't know how you did it, how any of us did, and I marvel at our survival, too. I am so sorry Violet isn't in your arms. Sending love.

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  10. I feel my daughters presence often... And smells get to me too. Thank you for sharing about violet here. Hugs

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  11. Thinking about you and Violet. I wish that none of us had to live in a world without our child/children. Sending you hope and hugs. xo

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  12. Thinking about you and Violet. I wish that none of us had to live in a world without our child/children. Sending you hope and hugs. xo

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  13. Unbelievable. I look back at going to the hospital, knowing that Nathaniel would mostly likely never come home with us. It's such an unfathomable experience to me, in some ways.

    Sending love to you and Violet, to E and D and Rob. You are so beautiful <3

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