Moments

I had a moment tonight. Loss moms and dads know exactly what that means. It means that one moment I was fine. Normal. Sane. And in an instant.....without warning or preparation.....I wasn't. In less time than it takes to blink I was reduced to tears and stood there-sobbing in the shower. Unable to control the emotions that had suddenly overwhelmed my spirit and removed all semblances of the normal me. The sane me. The in control me.
I had a moment.
The thing about child loss is that you are permanently prone to these moments. Times when life seems to be going along in a calm manner. Most things make sense. Most things are routine. And then-out of nowhere-BAM! It slaps you. Full force. Right across the face and there is nothing......not a single thing you can do. You succumb. Until it passes. But it never passes -not completely.
Tonight I stood there thinking of things I want to accomplish. Goals I want to set for myself. Milestones I hope to reach. I contemplated which number to set as my first goal. The amount of weight I would like to lose. And the timeframe I want to allow myself to reach that first goal. My daughter's graduation from high school. June 5th. I want to feel better, look better, weigh less by the time my daughter walks across the stage. I had wanted the same thing when my sons graduated high school. But I was.....oh. Wait. I wasn't.
The moment.
BAM!
Through the body wracking sobs my brain reminded my soul that no....I wasn't heavy when my sons graduated. I wasn't fat. I was pregnant. With THEM. The twins. My daughters. And then they died.
The last time I watched one of my children graduate from high school I was pregnant with two tiny,perfect, healthy baby girls. They were already running out of room and making me uncomfortable. I was already huge by my accounts. And they were already active......kicking me constantly as they wrestled inside of me.
The moment intensified.
They were there. With me. Alive. They were at the graduation ceremonies for both of their oldest brothers. But they won't be attending this graduation with me. They won't ever attend another graduation........not even their own. They've already missed the preschool and kindergarten graduations for Lily, Georgie and themselves. There aren't any cute photos of them at any of those events. There aren't any photos of them at all......at least....not while they were alive. Except the two photos- the ONLY two photos I have of myself pregnant with them. Both taken at the graduations of their brothers.
My moment.
Some people will read this and shake their head. They'll say to themselves in that tone that we loss parents hear so often that I need to stop dwelling on the past. They'll whisper that it isn't healthy to continue dredging up things best left in the past. They'll wonder why I can't just be thankful for the children I have.
They won't understand.
Nor do I want them to. To understand would require them to endure the most excruciatingly painful thing a parent can ever experience. The death of a child. Or in my case, children. I prefer they NEVER understand. But in not being able to understand there is misunderstanding. When we lose a child people mistakenly think that loss is just a moment. It's something that happened to us. Once. It's an event that is short termed and temporary. When you lose a child they think you lose that child at whatever age  the child happens to be and nothing past that.
They're wrong.
The death of a child isn't something that happens to us. It's something we live with every single day. It's not a single moment. It's a lifetime of moments. It's not temporary-it's permanent. It's with us every moment of every day of every year that we continue to live without our child. And I didn't just lose babies. I lost so much more than that. I lost two lives. Two futures. Two chances at all of the moments, all of the hopes, all of the dreams and goals that we as parents establish almost instantly for our children the moment we find out they exist. I lost a lifetime of moments.
And gained a lifetime of MOMENTS instead.