2 years

Two years ago we laid you to rest. It was the day of your funeral. Your Birthday came, I was sad, but not nearly as sad as I am this day. This week. Seems the further away your birthday gets this year the sadder I feel. Maybe because I also feel a little guilty that I didn't do more or grieve better this year.Maybe I'm feeling this way because the more able I am to move through life without you the further away you become. Sometimes it feels like a lifetime since I saw you, felt you. Felt your realness.Am I in this funk because I've learned how to not be so consumed with your death? Do I feel bad about that? I think so. I think I should feel worse. I'm stuck between two worlds.
I was just thinking about the days between death and burial. I remembered wondering how the funeral home could allow us wait 15 days to bury you. I was afraid of how you might look. I asked the director if  it was out of the question to open the casket, imagining you'd be too 'decomposed' to look at. I will never forget how gently she said to me
We can do things with babies that we can't with adults. She's so small that we are able to submerge her. She looks like she did when she came in, except for a small spot above her lip that is a little discolored from the fluid. She really looks good.
At the time she said it I was relieved. It was said with such professionalism and respect that I didn't go to a dark place. I wanted to hold her again. I wanted people to look at her, especially those who didn't come to the hospital.
Today though, a different thought grabbed me by the ankles and rendered me immovable for a bit.
Imagine that.
My baby floating in fluid preserving her dead body.
My baby.
Lifelessly floating.
Like a science project.
Like a museum body part.
Did they just drop her in a jar like a fish. Like a fish I once brought home from a pet store?
How fucked up is it that part of my thinking not only involves my dead daughter, but that she was submerged in fluid to preserve her body!?
I hate you Satan, you're an asshole!! No. Worse- you're a... well, just..pfft.

I have images that sometimes pop in my head that take me back to those days. For a long time I thought I had said everything there is to say here. About Audrey. Maybe about how her dying made me feel, but I realized with this thought that there really are a lot of facts I didn't talk about. A lot of other events surrounding that I haven't shared. Many many dark, haunting thoughts that I sit alone with. Thoughts that people are just better off not knowing. It's bad enough I and many other baby loss parents have experienced such darkness. Sometimes I wish I could paint them, then maybe they'd leave me alone.Who would want to look at them though?
Sorry to be so grim. I had to get this out. Out of me.