A year gone by

It has been a really long time since I have written here. More than a year actually and so much has happened. There is so much to say and yet, I have not been able to find the time or the words or even the energy to do so. I thought I would start up again and that perhaps by writing in this blog, it would be a way to heal. For as most of you know, our beautiful daughter Rachel died. She would have been a month old today. I can't believe it really. Any of it. It all seems so completely unreal to me even though it has been almost 4 weeks since she died.

Although I seem to have more "normal" moments (whatever that is now), I continue to feel like I am walking around in a daze. Like a zombie mother. I get up, help the boys get ready for school, feed them breakfast, make their lunches...all things I used to do but now it is all different. I suppose nothing will ever be the same for me. The other day, we were driving somewhere and I found a dry cleaners receipt and I started to cry because when I had dropped the clothes off, I had been pregnant. Now I was not pregnant and I had no baby. The grief just engulfed me for a moment. Those moments happen quite frequently I must admit. Everything for me has become "before Rachel" and "after Rachel" when I reference things in my head. Never could I have imagined that I would be experiencing a pain so raw and so deep one year ago. I read a very poignant article in a recent issue of JAMA (a medical journal) which was titled "The Before." The physician basically talked about giving a patient the diagnosis of cancer and how the patient gets the bad news, everything becomes divided into before/after. Having given bad news like that to many patients myself, I have now been on both sides of "The Before." Neither side is easy but being on the receiving end of that life changing moment has forever changed me.