|
 |
|
OUR BLUEBERRY
Akeelah's Mommy |
|
| Category: Home | Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | | | | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 |
|
|
|
|
THE SAME
|
|
Oct 01, 2011 07:13am (EST)
I keep a "public" blog- I started it when I was pregnant with Akeelah for family to keep up with everything. Those posts from the early days are so bittersweet to me. That me, that her, frozen in time.
Recently I added a feature that adds a "You might like this" at the bottom of each post and links to other posts. It's been jarring to see posts from early 2008 appear randomly into 2011, and yet fitting, as that is how my mind seems to go. Sometimes living in today, sometimes, many times, back in 2008.
A new lil' one joined Micah's music class, a 2 1/2 month old. It made me want to go back and look at Micah's pictures from when he was that age. As I was browsing back through my blog a "You might like this" had two of the same picture of Akeelah. I paused.
"Happy 2nd Birthday Akeelah!" the other "Happy 3rd Birthday Akeelah".
No change. Still frozen. Still no new pictures, no new memories. No new dresses. No favorite birthday presents. No change.
No matter how many times reality bops me upside the head it is still so impossible for my mind, my heart to grasp.
That picture will replay every year, never changing.
|
|
|
Posted by Akeelah's Mommy | Comments: (8) | Permalink
|
|
|
FUNK
|
|
Sep 06, 2011 08:45am (EST)
I had this whole entry yesterday about happiness and deleted it, because who am I fooling. Try as I might these days I am spiraling into a funk. And I'm watching it happen, which I always hate, and feel absolutely powerless to stop it. And I'm a bit at a loss for why it's happening right now.
Oh again, who I am I fooling. I'm pretty sure I know what set this all in motion. I didn't get flowers for Akeelah on the 27th and the 28th was her EDD. I didn't forget the days. I knew they where them the whole day and then on the drive home I forgot to stop. Cue immense guilt now. I knew there would be a day when it would happen, I just didn't want it to ever come. So here it is. At 38 months I didn't get flowers. They were late.
And lots of random things that I held so tightly too as if they were keeping me close to Akeelah, like doing things in a certain order, have stopped. And I knew they were stopping. I was mindful of stopping them telling myself how silly they were and that they didn't measure my love for Akeelah. And now I regret stopping them. It feels like she's farther away and the time that I spend thinking about her every single day isn't about her but about me and my grief- that's different than her.
Life has been moving so quickly and I wish it would all just stop so I could catch my breathe and regroup. Get reacquainted with my memories, with my daughter.
Micah is repeating everything we say these days and he won't say Akeelah's name. He says the neighbor's daughter's name. I told him say Sister, and he said her name... not Akeelah's.
And I wonder why I'm in a funk.
|
|
|
|
Posted by Akeelah's Mommy | Comments: (11) | Permalink
|
|
|
GOOD RIDDANCE
|
|
Aug 22, 2011 07:14am (EST)
Today I found out that the doctor we had with Akeelah had her hospital privileges permanently revoked. Too little, too late.
About a year after Akeelah was born we learned that she had previously had them revoked and was not allowed to mentor medical students. Why this wasn't public knowledge so that I could make an informed decision about my medical care is beyond me.
And as angry as I want to be at the system for failing me, I'm angry with myself because while at the hospital on Oahu, when they were calling back to our hometown and asking who our doctor was that they should make an appointment with I said her name and knew that I should switched doctors right there to the doctor that had medivac'd us. I should have never gone back to Dr. M, EVER.
While on Oahu with the perinatologist that we had just met... never even knew such a person existed I remember asking what I needed to do for Akeelah. Did I need to eat something different (how naive I was!?!) he said, get her as close to term as you can.
And I failed. And Dr. M, in all her stupidity failed. Tons of contractions, lower back pain, change in discharge, 4 or 5 contractions during my 20 minute office monitoring. And the witch says, you're in good hands go home. Less than 24hrs later Akeelah is born... at a po-dunk hospital an ocean away from a NICU.
I'm so thankful she'll never practice again here, and at the same time furious that she ever did. That no one ever said anything. I think of what a fool we were. How other people who knew how awful she was must have seen us under her care and felt pity. How I wish someone would have said something! How I wish I would have listened to my gut.
She's gone, that's what's important today, and all I can worry about is today. Good Riddance.
|
|
|
|
Posted by Akeelah's Mommy | Comments: (12) | Permalink
|
|
|
THAT FAMILIAR ACHE
|
|
Jul 16, 2011 02:40am (EST)
Grief is felt in the heart. It can sit there heavy as a ton of bricks. But today, that's not where it has set up camp. Today it is in my arms. And it's strange how that ache has changed. They don't ache to carry a baby. They know they should wrap around a three year old. My hands know better than to expect a small lil' face to cradle. They know. What a journey this is.
|
|
|
|
Posted by Akeelah's Mommy | Comments: (7) | Permalink
|
|
|
AND SO IT BEGINS AGAIN
|
|
Jun 21, 2011 06:31am (EST)
Three years ago we were at the hospital waiting to be medi-vac'd.
Wow, well, that's all I needed to type for one of "those" cries to find me. This year what I feel more than anything is sadness. I miss her so much. All of me misses her everywhere. It hurts all over.
While this year and last I didn't actively dread and re-live each what if as this week approached I could feel each milestone pass by. One can only hope to distract themselves so much. There are some experiences that leave an indelible scar on your very being, and these are them.
There is so much to do yet again for her birthday and I find myself paralyzed. There are letters with pre-term labor warning sign and infant loss books to go out, blankets to be made and delivered. And while there is peace in doing these things, there is also great sadness. These are not what any parent should do to prep for a daughter's birthday.
There will be cake, a dinner and a trip away from our home to our remote peaceful place. None of these things will fill the sadness that lives in my heart. Sadness that has set up permanent shop these days, especially as Micah took our three year old neighbor's hand to walk with her to the water table.
Thank you Share mommas for always being here. This was the blog, the cry I needed to let some of the sadness out.
|
|
|
|
Posted by Akeelah's Mommy | Comments: (14) | Permalink
|
|
|
SHOOK LOOSE
|
|
Jun 14, 2011 08:44am (EST)
I am a huge StoryCorps fan. It's an oral history project that travels the US capturing conversations between regular folk and archives them at the Library of Congress. When I heard that they were coming to our state I was over the moon.
Sunday a wonderful friend and I participated in the project. She recently lost her little one during her pregnancy. We spent our 40 minute interview talking about our kids. What its been like, how it's changed our friendship. It was amazing, healing. And to know that our stories, Akeelah and Adam's will be archived in the Library of Congress with their own Dewy Decimal number is just the coolest. My great grand kids grand kids will be able to hear me talk about my love for Akeelah. It's so permanent. I love it.
Aaaaaaaand it shook a lot of things loose. Memories about those weeks and days after Akeelah was born. Memories of how much it all hurt. I had forgotten about the first class I went back to. I had forgotten how alien it all felt, how I watched everyone laughing and going about the day so normally. I had forgotten about the cry I had on the drive home. One of those cries that comes from the deepest hurt you have.
I haven't had a cry like that... in probably over a year now. I wonder if I ever will again. I think there's a part of me that knows, that if I truly let all my guards down, I could cry like that right now. But I don't. Is that what progress is? What "better" is? You're better at keeping yourself all put together? I don't know.
Things feel shook loose. I suppose it's to be expected two weeks before Akeelah's 3rd birthday, amidst all the what ifs.
Big sigh.
|
|
|
|
Posted by Akeelah's Mommy | Comments: (8) | Permalink
|
|
 Archives
|
|
 |
 |
 |
|
|
