Happy Birthday Darling

Today is your birthday, it's bittersweet for me. You're not here yet we celebrate. Happy 3rd birthday my darling. Three years have come and gone in the flash of an eye. 

I sit here on the deck watching the stars and listening to the grasshoppers sing as I type this out.

How can one's heart be so heavy yet so light and joyful? It's impossible to answer, yet, here I sit feeling this way. Sorrowful yet elated. 

There are so many things I wish you could see. So many things I wish I could show you. I'm sure you see all that I do from where you are but it would be grand to put you on my shoulders and let you see the world from here. It brings me pain to know that I can't ever do this with you in this life. 

The overwhelming sense of joy comes from seeing all the great things that were accomplished today in your honor, in your name. Pure unadulterated happiness spews from within knowing that your name rang openly across the world today. That so many acts of kindness were bestowed upon society for you and by you. 

I sit here writing this blog with a heavy yet happy heart and tears both sad & happy stain my face. I miss you more than I could ever put into words but seeing your greatness put into solid action today was stupendous. 

Today was not cumbersome. Today was not dreary. Today was not filled with gloom. It was beautiful, filled with happiness, filled with grandeur, and with smiles. 

I smiled more today than I have in probably a year. They were genuine and heartfelt smiles as I opened the doors for others, as I said hello to every single person I saw today. My heart danced in pure bliss as I walked through the day. Feeling my phone shake in my pocket as I worked and seeing messages for you. 

I passed on many acts of kindness for you. I giggled in delight every time I saw another one taking place. 

Everyday is a new learning experience for me. Today's lesson was that kindness IS contagious. You show your smile and the world smiles back. You put out positive vibes and the vibration you receive is positive. Lessons in life are given when you least expect them. And sometimes in the hardest ways. Thank you sweet child, for the lessons you have taught me over the last three years. You amaze me! 

While I wish more than anything that things were different and that you were here with me I still feel blessed to have known you at all. You are one incredible little girl. 

You've made me a better mother, a better person and reminded me that I believe that people are inherently good. That this world, while lurking with evil, is a beautiful and happy place. For these lessons I can never repay you. 

Happy Birthday Harper. You are loved and missed. 

Love always,

Mommy

Survival of the Weakest

Dear Harper,

It has been 10 months since I last wrote to you, I haven't had the words. It is surreal to be approaching your third birthday. And in this moment I feel words pouring from my heart.

Ten months, so many things can shift and so many things can change. Life has kept me on my toes. I woke up, like an epiphany. I realized that I had been floating through life this last decade, not really ever coming or going. No plan of action in place, which is not like me. I always have a plan, I am a planner. I have been waking up, breathing, then going back to bed. Sure, there is activity in between but days began to meld into one another, weeks and months pass but no real concept of time because every day was the same mundane schedule. I was surviving, nothing more.

What does it mean? Surviving?

sur·vive  

/sərˈvīv/

Verb Continue to live or exist, esp. in spite of danger or hardship. Continue to live or exist in spite of (an accident or ordeal). In the last decade, I have been broke, I have been exhausted, I have been sad, I have been happy, I have hurt in ways unimaginable. I ran the gambit of emotions. But all in all, I just survive. I manage to make it to my next breath, my next moment. Waiting for that divine intervention to tell me what I needed to do. Months came and went. Then March came, I realized then that I am barely treading to keep my head above the water. I am a fighter, I had kept my head out of the water for 10 years. I was tired and I felt the surface beginning to hit my nose, I needed more than just surviving. Everyone said it was you, that losing you broke me. It wasn't you, it was before that. I am not sure exactly when I went from being who I was to this weak version of me. I have always been a fighter, and strong willed, and opinionated. It is who your dad fell in love with and who I had lost touch with.   Much of what your father fell in love with can be acredited to the fact that I am a Leo. My August birthday brought many things with it. Leos are usually generous, warmhearted,creative, enthusiastic, broad-minded, expansive, faithful, and loving. I can also be pompous, patronizing, bossy, dogmatic, and intolerant.Often my faults can be as large in scale as my virtues. I used to be such an optimist, seeing the silver lining in everything. But something shifted as the years passed, the older I got I became increasingly pessimistic. I became an overly negative person with an excessive temper. I saw this shift as weakness, angry at myself for becoming soft and soft spoken. So I went into survival mode, quick temper, flaring at most everything. So much so that even your brother and sister were afraid of me. No one wants to know that their own children are scared of them. And in this discovery I began shutting down, shutting out most everything and everyone.  So I decided to shake things up...      My mom has said I am the one who likes to shake things up. So I took the snow globe that is life and shook it as hard as I could, until all the little pieces shook loose and I watched as they fell back to the bottom. This moment of weakness, this moment of no regrets and no consequences was exactly what my life needed.  I am still watching the little pieces of snow fall into place, but I am happier than I have ever been. As these little pieces fall into place, I find moments of weakness, moments of pure strength and will, moments of absolute madness, and then there are moments of pure bliss. All of them lead to one thing, an enlightened heart, an opened mind, and a free spirit. There have been a lot of tears over the last few months, there have been laughs, and silence. They are all rebuilding me. If shaking the proverbial snow globe has done anything for me, it has shown me that emotions do not make you weak, they make you human. I feel alive again, my heart is pumping and I am seeing the world with new eyes, with a heart that is slowly being pieced back together with a new found ability to communicate openly and honestly. It was a grand delusion to believe that I was ever weak. Never, and I mean NEVER, allow yourself to believe that you are weak because what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And I am stronger by the day. I love you sweet bean, Love, Mommy

Birthday Wishes

Dear Harper,

My heart breaks on a daily basis. It is an ache so intense that you feel you might implode on yourself. You forget everything but the pain. I flash to your beautiful face, so perfect, so angelic. Death would have been a welcomed relief in those hours. Remembering my heart hitting the floor when I handed you back for the last time, knowing I would never see you again but also knowing it was time to let go. In that moment, actually feeling your heart shatter into a million pieces, knowing it would never be whole again.

Flash forward two years, where has the time gone? How has it been two years since I laid in the hospital knowing you were not coming home with me, not in a way that I wanted. I wonder about the what ifs and who you would be.Would you have my curly hair or would you have straight hair like your daddy? Would you have blue eyes or green? Pigtails or not? All the things I see in my dreams.So many unanswered questions about you and who you are.

I have spent the last two years learning who I am without you. Learning to live with a piece missing from heart and soul. Learning how to walk tall and call myself your mother.  Giving myself wholly and loving more freely because I wanted everyone to know your love. To know the love of a child, never wavering, always constant, and completely unconditional. I stand up tall and strong, proudly saying your name. Showing people that it is possible to move on even without healing.  I have tried my hardest and even with my foul ups I think I am succeeding.

If I had one wish for your birthday it would be to show you the world, the love that fills it just for you. I try to experience that love for you. I try to see everything with new eyes for you. Experience everything for the first time for you. I am not dwelling on your death, I am relishing in your life. The taste of the icing on a cupcake, or licking the spoon after making brownies. The joy that is your sister beating on the pots and pans with spoons. Her ripping everything out of the drawers. It is all beautiful and it has been the most magical experience to see if from the eyes .

Of course if I had my way there would be a million and one wishes that I would have for you. Showing you the world, showing you a life of joy and meaning.  Watching you race across the yard with your brother and sister. Instead, two years have flown by before my eyes...two long and heart warming yet heartbreaking years. We released balloons today, as always, with letters to you and we watched as they were snatched from the sky into the heavens by your tiny hands. A sight most beautiful.

I stand here before you, my heart never healing yet learning how to live without you in my world. Signs of your presence come often and I always say "Message received sweet Bean, loud and clear." I know you reach to touch us and show us you are okay and they always come through, received with loving and open arms and for that I thank you.

You are such a beautiful girl, showing me how to live. I want to live every day of my life to make you proud to call me Momma. Every day that passes is one day closer to us meeting again, though I want to make sure my life is rich on experiences to share with you.

I am living, breathing proof that even when things don't heal, they are bearable, become easier to deal with. My heart still aches daily for you, but it is out of want and need but I can wake up and get out of bed because I know that is what you would want and need from me. I thank God every day for the gift of life so that I can make you proud sweet angel. My hope in life is to succeed.

Happy Birthday my sweet little Harper Bean. I want nothing more than you to know my love.

I love you and I miss you.

Love always & forever,

Mommy