Upcoming anniversaries

I have a bad feeling about the next several months, if yesterday was any indication of how it is going to be. The anniversaries of new, significant dates are starting. The day I found out I was pregnant, the day we told people…typical things you do when pregnant. But there are other dates and things that are a reminder. There has been a lot of talk about the 1 year anniversary of the 2010 Winter Olympics, which I watched all the time. I got the flu shortly after finding out I was pregnant and the Olympics kept me from being bored to tears when I felt too sick to get off the couch. Then I had a few days reprieve before the all-day nausea started. On February 13, 2010, we took Keisha, my step-daughter, out for lunch. On February 14th, my sister Laurie and nephew Ben came over and cleaned the litter boxes and we spent several hours together.

I think this blog is going to become a record of memorable of dates until June 2, 2011. They are hard to think about. It is hard to remember such a happy time in my life when I know the unhappy ending. I wish that we could just skip forward to June 2 and past the 1 year anniversary of Jacob’s birth and late May when he died. Since I don't know the exact date he died, there will be days of wondering if that day marks one year.

All of the dates coming up are overwhelming me right now. I spent a while on the couch last night crying thinking about it all. How one year ago at that time, I was probably lying on the couch and staring at my belly and rubbing my hands on it, thinking of my baby in there and of everything we had to look forward to.

As I lay there crying, Sadie, poor sickly little Sadie, crawled over to me and lay against my chest. Everytime I made some noise while crying, she looked at me and purred a little louder. I started to think of how it could be worse, because it can always be worse. I thought that Sadie was going to die last Sunday night, but there she was, cuddling up against me and I was grateful that I wasn’t grieving for her and for Jacob. Oh, but I miss Jacob so much. I was starting to think that I don’t need to sleep with his blanket every night, but I do. I’m just not ready to stop yet.

When I think of how daunting these dates are, I think back to what I have already survived. The months that I should still have been pregnant, but wasn’t and how every Thursday that went by, another week of how far along I should be, was noted. Every Tuesday that passed, taking me another week away from the last time I held Jacob. The living in fear of Jacob’s due date and then Christmas and then New Year’s Eve. But I survived all of those dates, as hard as it was. I can survive these ones too.