Unfolding

I should be planning a first birthday party.

Instead, I'm planning a memorial/remembrance day of sorts. It's hard for me to call it a "birthday party." Birthdays are celebrations. I'm not celebrating. I'm mourning. Still, nearly a year later, still mourning. Forever-mourning, I imagine. I never wanted to be this woman.

My children, even the older ones, want to take part, so on April 1, the day William was born, we will go the park and do a balloon release. I'm bringing helium balloons and Sharpies - we can each write a message (or for the littles, draw a picture).

Then it's on to get our memorial tattoos. We are both getting his handprint - mine will be actual size, in black, over my heart. Just where his little hand would have rested when he was nursing. Just where I hope another little future-baby's hand will rest again some day. I fantasize about that image a lot, and hope I'm not just dreaming. M's will be his own handprint, in black, on his forearm, and William's handprint, in blue, in the center.

After that, it's dinner and cake. Yes, I know, it's not a birthday party, but I ordered a cake anyway. The tattoo place is an hour away - but fortuitously, it's right around the corner from the bakery that made our wedding cake. I am ordering a mini replica of our wedding cake for our 10 year anniversary (coming up this July) and decided to get a cake for William.

He should be smashing frosting in his hair on that day... I wonder if all that dark hair would have stayed? So many things I'll never know.

The woman who took my cake order had tears in her eyes when I handed her the copy of his little handprint, the one I wanted on the cake. They had just celebrated her daughter's first birthday. "You never know, do you?" she said, shaking her head. I used to be on that side of motherhood, I thought. I remember. How sad. How awful. How can you cope? I would just die...

Why did her daughter live and my son die? More useless questions with no real answers.

M. is making a memorial shelf for William's things - his picture, the cedar box with his ashes, etc.

And we have started trying again, after a two month break getting my body back to some sort of balance. I hope we have succeeded. I can feasibly take a test on what would have been William's first birthday. It would be so apropos... what a beautiful gift, to know I was carrying new life on that day.

And of course, a cruel joke if things go the other way. April Fool's. Again.

And as usual, there's nothing to do but let it unfold.