Please be aware that this post may serve as a trigger as it deals with a child and a near death experience.
This is the first time since Monday that I have had a quiet moment to myself. The first time that I have been able to really sit with what my world almost became last Monday. All week my fingers have itched to write it down. I guess I will never lose the need to write in order to understand myself, my feelings, my thoughts and my world. And if needed, write to let it go.
It’s not as though I haven’t been reliving those moments over and over again. Miss Pumpkin hanging limp and R running towards her. His laying her on the grass, her face white, her chest still. The moment when the breath pushed itself out of her mouth and then her uncontrollable tears.
I can hear the terror and pain in R’s voice as he looked up and saw her, Miss Heddy screaming “Mimi, Mommy”, the voice of the 911 operator, sirens in the distance and the absolute stillness of the rest of the neighbourhood as our world almost ended.
I can feel the emptiness before the grief came rushing in to fill even the tiniest crevice in my body. The relief that she was ok tainted by the wonder if I had been given my daughter back only to lose her again because lack of oxygen had damaged her?
And the gratitude that I exhale with each breath that she is safe and that I can get up in the middle of the night and hold her and kiss her and watch her breathe. Gratitude that my world is filled with the sound of her voice – laughing, yelling, talking, whining or crying and that I have to steal moments to find silence. Gratitude that I have to come up with “one more story” or answers to the question “why do ants no have eyelashes?” Gratitude that I have to roll over in the morning so she can crawl in next to me, her morning breath causing my nose to wrinkle as it warms my face, her fingers pulling on my ear.
Gratitude that I can see her, touch her, taste her, hear her and am not left with only memories and photos to appease my desire for her.
There is nothing that we could have done differently. Of course, there are “what if’s” but I long ago learned that you can’t live life if you dwell on “what if’s” and “if onlys.” We will still let the girls go in the backyard by themselves, bite our tongue as they climb high on the playground and let go of their hand so they can run down the hill.
A fear was born inside of me when I found out I was pregnant. It clings to every cell, permeates every breath and fights constantly to take me over but I decided then that I refused to live in fear and to raise my children in fear. I believed and still believe that one of the greatest gifts I can give them as their mother is to protect them not from the dangers of the world but the fear that I carry with me.
And so even though I know she almost died, she didn’t – she lived and I refuse to let her be given that breath of life only to have my fear steal it away from her.
