Fears

As I put Meghan down for her nap, she looks up at me with that big smile and those bright eyes and I feel my heart shatter into a million pieces. I feel the weight of it crashing over me. I love this child. I need this child. Meghan is my safety net, catching me when I fall and saving me from my own demise. Despite my efforts to hold myself back, I am attached to her. She is her brother's equal in my heart.


I cannot help to make comparisons. Every moment of every day I am comparing them. It's not the same as other parents, the lists of milestones and achievements. I instead picture Max at the age Meghan is now. At first it was a form of remembrance, but now it feels like watching a horror film that you know the ending to in slow motion. I subtract her age now from the age he was when he died, the sum of which acts as a ticking count down. I'm obsessed with how much time I have left. Terrified that when the bell tolls she'll leave me too.

A therapist once told me that everyone important leaves me or dies. It was purely an observation, stating the facts. It is true with two exceptions, Robert and Meghan. No matter my many attempts, I cannot wipe the slate and start fresh allowing myself to relax and belief that the curse is gone. I just have this ticking time bomb when I wait for them to leave me. I check Robert's breathing in the middle of the night, panicked when he sleeps on his stomach with his head buried in the pillow. I sneak into Meghan's bedroom in the middle of the night to check on her. I wake her if her nap goes on too long. As I climb the stairs to her bedroom my mind plays out the movie in my head of finding her lifeless, my screams echoing as my hand turns the knob. It's not until I see her and she smiles at me, "Hi Mama!" that I realize I had been holding my breath.

I imagine the deaths of my husband and daughter as if envisioning them will prepare me for what I believe to be a fact. I have it all played out. Robert, bless him, maxes out his life insurance each November to placate me. There is little comfort in knowing that if he were leave us I would be able to support us while we got on our feet. My Meghan I would follow to the ends of the earth and beyond, nothing left to anchor me.

I push these thoughts back as far as I can and try to return to the optimistic...planning a birthday party. My little girl is going to turn two. An age my precious boy never reached. I fear buying birthday presents to never be opened...again. Planning a party that will never be attended...again. The weight of it all is suffocating. It's exactly as I've been told by other parents of lost children, the pain never lessens it just gets easier to push back. It's this ever expanding scream of horror that starts as a cold jolt deep in my stomach and wells upward, tightening my chest, swelling my throat until I feel I can't breathe, daring me to open my mouth and scream until my voice gives out. But my jaw clamps down and I hold the scream in my mouth, my tongue running over it like a sucking candy, savoring it until the flavor fades and the emptiness returns.

But they're alive and well, so I dig deep and muster up some courage from an unseen barrel. I will fight, I will cling, I will hold on with all my might. I will carry on. I will smile and celebrate, my sweet girl turning two in just a month and a half.