22 Years
- Description
- Rachel Jefferies:
All in My Head Bits and Bobs
All In my Head Mixed Media Collages
Carefully Curated | Patina: Collage Bits & Bobs
Pink Reptile Designs and Design By Soco:
The Good Old Days
Rachel Jefferies and Studio Basic:
Silent Battles: Grief Bundle
Font: Pea Kari (my handwriting)
For the past few days I’ve been looking at the numbers on the calendar, growing more and more introspective as we grow closer to the date. March 5th, it will be 22 years since I last held my Olivia in my arms. Yet it seems as if her passing happened only yesterday
With a mother’s intuition, I had known something was wrong during that pregnancy from a couple of weeks before. I hadn't felt her move for days. I remember walking in the hospital that day, just knowing she was gone. When the tech completed an ultrasound to confirm her pasing, I saw the perfect form of my baby up on the screen. I remember looking so happy, thinking everything was okay after all, and the tech pointing out that the heart was still. No blinking blip. No more life.
I remember her birth. The pinch of the needle as they induced labor. When other mother's can't wait to push their baby out, I was desperately wanting to hold her in for just one more moment. There was no sweet lullaby played when she was born, no tears of joy or screams of a newborn. There was only silence.
I remember the kind nurse dressing her up for me. Taking her footprints and hand imprints. I remember all the brief moments I got to spend with her. They are forever imprinted in my heart. Her deep chocolate brown eyes and the wisps of midnight curls that curled upon her face. I remember how perfect her cold body was as it laid upon my chest. How the moment seemed surreal. The cold drift of air that passed through that corner room of the maternity ward. Every single detail of those hours I spent there.
With that same mother’s intuition, no matter how busy or stressed I am, no matter how many other things I seem to forget as I race through my life at breakneck speed, I never forget this anniversary. It is imprinted on my heart. As the date nears, I feel a stillness settling in, a quiet place amid the chaos, a space reserved just for this baby, the one I never to got raise, the one I call Livy.
In the past, I have talked about the ways Olivia shaped my family by her absence rather than her presence, and that truth remains with me. I am very much aware of the fact that life would be very different had she lived. She managed to leave her mark on my heart, even without taking a breath. She lingers here, not only in my heart but around the edges of our lives — especially the lives of our two girls and young man who followed her. I know them because I did not know my sweet Livy. What a sorrowful and yet beautiful impact she had.
So, thank you, baby, for all that you were and all that you have given me without ever setting foot on this earth. The power of one small life.
