Always, always I am drawn here again.
Where I can put words down on the page. Where I can see my thoughts leap out of my mind and take physical form. Where I can capture how I feel, put a name to it, and then release it.
Always.
Strange to come back to writing, after many months of not. Strange to sit down at this familiar place, and be aware that there are giant gaps in the history of me. Strange, knowing that, were someone to find me for the first time, they would have no idea what is going on. So I guess some background is in order.
I’m Mandy. I’m married to Brock. We’ve been growing up together and raising children in North Carolina for the last eleven years. I am a photographer, studying to be a midwife. I homeschool my kids, of which there are four. Ronan has a poets soul and a mischievous smile – he is 8. Ruby sets the world on fire with her kindness and her joy – she is 6. Ryder is every single bit a powerhouse – of love, of energy, of kindness, of bravery – he is 4. Rory has eyes that are dark and knowing, to the depths of his soul; he’s filled with a calm being, an intense joy – he died when he was 19 months old.
An interesting paragraph that begins with “I am Mandy,” and ends with ‘my baby died.’
That feels like my whole life right now. All encompassing, entirely enveloping, completely smothering. Grief and sadness and sorrow and loss. I am Mandy, and my baby died.
It has been five weeks since he died. Rory slipped away unnoticed while our family was cleaning out the attic, and he drowned. I found him, and did CPR until the ambulance arrived. The team in the emergency room was able to get a heartbeat. We airlifted him to the children’s hospital where he spent 24 hours under the most amazing care of the most incredible human beings on the planet in the pediatric ICU. We held him and cried when they told us his lungs were not going to get better; there was nothing else we could do. We held him and cried when they removed the tubes that were keeping him alive. We held him and cried as he left.
It has been five weeks, and it feels like a hundred years and mere seconds in the same instant. I can’t believe he’s gone, and I sometimes struggle to believe he was real.
Sometimes, I feel like that sweet, beautiful baby boy (whom I can still smell if I try hard enough) was really just an incredible dream that we all were lucky enough to dream together for a while – and then we woke up.
So where am I standing now?
Alive. Feeling like maybe I shouldn’t be. Struggling with positive emotions and negative ones. Knowing Rory wouldn’t want us to be sad, and yet reeling with the guilt of joy. Breathing, and breathing deeply.
Working at walking forward. Always forward. Even when it’s hard.
