January oh January

January is one of those hard months... it is immediately after Christmas. I think sometimes it can be a let down to get back to that normal life grind. You know the one where dinner is cooked instead of called out. The one where you are putting the budget, the diet, the house, and your life back together. Christmas is living large at its best for many. December is big and colorful,  full and busy and MERRY and JOLLY. January is quiet and white, it is reserved and it is lived close. It is a study in opposites this December to January thing... and it can be daunting to put all of your life back into the packaging that it popped out of during December. It is kind of like stuffing the sleeping bag back  into the handy little bag they offer with it. The dimensions of the bag haven't changed... but the sleeping bag has and all the pushing pulling tugging and straining isn't going to put it back neatly... instead you end up with a lumpy mess that has that bag strained to the bursting point with the seams starting to rip. Life.... iddn't it wonderful.

The answer to that is YES... by the way... it is wonderful and it is exactly as it is meant to be. Bursting at the seams and all. It is a mess... but it is a beautiful wonderful mess... and it is exactly as it is supposed to be. It is just as beautiful in the quiet white moments as it is in the busy colorful moments. And all of the moments come together to make an amazingly beautiful collage of color and white, dim and bright, happy and sad. Still, January has always had that let down feel to it.. as Christmas ends and life picks back up but at a winter pace.

 January 2006 though... was different... see... I was looking forward to a baby... until Jan 13 ( Friday the 13 by the way) when I ended up in the hospital trying to figure out how I could save that pregnancy... and the baby that I wanted so bad, trying to imagine ways that I could keep that little girl where she was supposed to be for a little longer... a little bit longer. .... a little bit longer.
I laid in a hospital bed with my head tilted down and my feet tilted up... trying to keep food down because of the pressure of being upside down on a mag sulfate drip... willing that baby to stay where she was for a little bit longer... a little bit longer. Just... a ... LITTLE .... bit longer. I prayed, I meditated... I gritted my teeth and I tried to FORCE my body with my mind to listen to me. I bargained with myself... with God... with the Goddess... I did everything I could imagine. I would have traded anything... even my own life to make it JUST A LITTLE BIT LONGER. I laid in that bed counting kicks and noticing how she liked music and how she responded to her daddy's voice. I knew that baby from inside me... and I wanted so badly to know her outside too. I pictured her playing, laughing, running, jumping. I imagined an impish little smile and I willed her to live to show it to me so hard it was a physical feeling. Just a little bit longer... please just a LITTLE BIT LONGER.

On the 17th while watching an episode of Tripping the Rift with my husband... my water broke... and the hope for extending that pregnancy any longer died. Dave was rattled... he didn't know what to do.... So ... he went to work. He called me later crying and said baby I don't know what I was thinking I am on my way... don't have that baby until I get there. Aislynn was born at 7:02 PM Jan 17 2006 to an uphill battle. She was 15.5 ounces... 12 inches... and at 22 weeks 6 days gestation she had a hell of a fight on her hands. Her body wasn't up to the fight... and her spirit wasn't meant for our earth... and Dave and I had to face those facts on Jan 19th when we walked together from my room on Mother Baby to the NICU.... and we held her before her life support was turned off. Our sweet girl our first born daughter gained her angel wings on January 19th, and I walked off of the Mother/Baby unit in the hospital... with my arms empty, Wondering how in the world I could call myself a mother. On January 23 we had a funeral. Ten days.... ten days filled with the best thing... and the worst thing a mother's heart can imagine.

Sometimes it is hard to know where the story goes from there... there are those who know the FACTS... I went on to have Aidan.. I said goodbye to him... I went on to have Ashlynn and Taryn... life smoothed out, got rough again... smoothed out got rough again .... smoothed... well you know was life. There are those who know the EMOTIONS... there are people who know that I couldn't go shopping by myself for a year... that I wore Dave's winter coat and he wore... a sweatshirt... through January, February, March... that I found the blanket that I was knitting for her one evening... and fell down to my knees SCREAMING with sobs because the pain was PHYSICALLY too much for me. that there were entire days that I didn't get out of bed... and... when I did it was because my mom or my husband MADE me. Some know that I baby sat my niece from the Monday after Aislynn's funeral... until about a week before I got a positive pregnancy test for Aidan.  Some are aware that Ariah was my light... that her light in this world was one of the reasons I kept going.

So January... for the last ten years it has taken on a different kind of dread... it has taken the count down effect instead. It isn't so much that the quiet after the storm is hard for me to process... it is more like I am counting down... almost seemingly until my death. I know I know I know melodramatic. Still understand.... that on January 19th 2006 when they brought my little girl's body to me neatly dressed... and lifeless.... that was simply put... the worst thing I could EVER IMAGINE in my life. There it was... no equivocation THE WORST THING I COULD IMAGINE... and it happened... to me. That worst thing was all mixed up with the holidays... Dave's birthday... and worst of all MY CHILD'S birthday. Not every one can do it... point at THE INSTANT... you know... the one... that one where every thing in their lives changed... for better or worse that ONE instant that makes life on one side so drastically different from life on the other. Aislynn's birth was one of those instants... her death another. So many big moments in one little week.

What I mean though about it being hard to know where my story goes from January 19th 2006 is this... Simply... My life did not end. My story did not end as abruptly as it felt hers did... In fact HER story did not end there. Aislynn Bridget Haynie did not meet her end on January 19th. Her body did... her physicality did, but the essence that made HER who she is... it hasn't ended. Melissa did not end on that day. In fact Melissa went on to birth one more angel and two souls here on Earth. Melissa stands before you all here as a testament to the fact that life DOES in FACT move on. Not only does life move on... but happiness comes again. Softly at first... and sometimes rejected even violently in the beginning, but it keeps coming.  I cannot live in a place of constant sadness... No child can be a place of constant sorrow for her parent. Even a child of memory. And we cannot live in the darkness of grief forever, even if we take shelter there for a time and revisit it every now and then we cannot take up residence there... we must climb to the light. We must remember to smile and to laugh, letting the brilliance that life has to offer in again.

January for me is muted... quieter... darker than other months for me. And this is okay... I take refuge in that quietude. I take a solace in the stillness that is January. I know I will not stay there.... I know I will come back to life, just as the world around me comes back when the snow melts and the first hints of green raise their arms to the sun. I no longer fear that I will somehow lose my way and end up in the darkness alone forever. I have been so fortunate to have family and friends who have shone their light for me as a beacon while I foray into the grief of remembering her, because I do not have memories of her that are not twisted up with the memory of her crossing over.

 This January has been different. It has been filled with an excitement and an expectation, that I can hardly understand. In fact that almost creates a feeling of guilt inside of me. A survivor's guilt if you will. I stumbled upon a quote from Abraham Hicks last week that offered me pause.

" There is no value in grief or regret because regret is always talking about the past, and you have no power there. You cannot vibrate in your past. You are doing all of your vibrating in your NOW. So whenever you are feeling regret or grief, you have vibrated out of the range of your inner being, and you are feeling the emptiness of that." - Abraham Hicks

 This in all honestly caused a forceful response in me. It stopped me on a dime. Nine years ago simply reading that quote would have angered me. It would have sent me reeling because I didn't know how else to live my life except in that place of the past... because I felt that in the past was the only place that I had my baby. Those few days when I could lay and focus all of my attention on her kicks... those fleeting hours where i could touch her foot and watch her respond... those seconds where Dave put his hand out... and she grabbed his thumb. I truly would have argued that I HAD to live in those past moments to be WITH her. But those moments feel more and more empty the further they are from me... and after ten years... even the memories seem a little worn sometimes.

Forgive me for sounding melodramatic here... but ... the Spiritualist Church saved me from that space... It offered me not just the belief that Aislynn is still... but proof. Not only does it offer proof, but as I delve into the Morris Pratt education it offered that proof in one place for me to explore. My mother a gifted medium offered me messages from Aislynn long before I entered into Morris Pratt.... but Morris Pratt and my own exploration of my own mediumship abilities have offered me a unique manner of communication MYSELF with my daughter. Aislynn is not gone... she has changed... she has stepped through a doorway that I have not yet, is all. A door way that I do NOT want to step through not with Ashlynn and Taryn and Dave... and so many others still on this side. A door way that I WILL not step through right now. But... if I am not willing to make that transformation, then I am called upon to make the time that I have before I DO transform the best that it can be.... and it cannot be the best if I am living looking backward. Life IS NOT meant to be lived that way. It makes you afraid to take a step. Life is supposed to be lived looking FORWARD. And as the realization of this takes flight in my soul... I know that I have conquered what is for many; the fear of death. How can I be afraid to die... when I know that it is not the end. What was to me a little girl... is a great big spirit with lots of work to do. She is in a place where she is happy... and it is separated from me by a veil... but not cut off from me. So as that realization resonates within me... there is another quote again by Abraham Hicks... that offers me a moment of pause.... and it is this;

 "When you show yourself that you can return to joy under those conditions [grieving] there is never ever, ever, ever again anything for you to fear." - Abraham Hicks