Priorities

      A box came in the mail last weekend. It was weighty with more than physical mass. My husband picked it up from the front steps and brought it in the house, set it on the table across from the front door, nearly an impossible place to miss a box that size.
       With three girls six and under, boxes this size don't get missed. They sparkle with promise, a gift or treat gleaming through the plain cardboard and into their imagination. Apparently not this box though. It simply sat waiting.
       I didn't mistake it when I came home. It caught my eye as I removed my boots, caked with snow, and tossed them onto the entryway rug. The sticker on the top was a large return address, the contents inside no mystery though I had not ever laid eyes on the finished product. The red lettering bolded the box as I passed it, begging to be marked as "Priority" in my day. I brushed my hand on it as I pushed it out of my mind.
       "I can't open that now," I told my husband brusquely as I was clamoring to start dinner, help with homework, dose insulin.
       "I couldn't either," came the reply, and neither of us sounded guilty about it in that moment.
The week ate me alive though and mommy guilt has been running rampant. Plenty of excuses trip through my mind that all amount to life just being life. The car broke down, triggering monumental arguing over the plan of how to fix it. An unexpected road trip with said broken car loomed large and fast over the remainder of last weekend and my girls have pushed my mothering to its limits.
       Since last weekend, that pressure has been building and I have been trying to get myself organized to quell some of that stress. I have been working extra meeting days during the week, struggling to get to appointments and to find a happy place to have our girls watched while I'm busy, as we ended our relationship with daycare. I have been feeling less and less up to parenting and have been needing a moment alone, just to breathe and find myself. But prioritizing life is tricky, attempting to decide what holds more value, whose career or job is more important, which child deserves more attention any given day, when it's appropriate to have a mommy meltdown and when to button it up and keep it all together for the greater good.
       I've been looking forward to these few days alone then, today specifically, as a beacon of blank space shining bright on my calendar. I shooed the family out the door this morning, they were running late as usual, finally loading up and driving away at noon. I realized I hadn't eaten breakfast and poured my cereal more as a lunch and let my mind wander. My eyes drifted to that table, the box balanced still from last weekend, its red Priority label still loudly proclaiming its importance, and I determined that along with dishes and laundry and maybe a nap, I would take care of the package we'd put at the bottom of our to-do list.

       Months ago, while in the throes of the heaving sorrows of grief, I found a resource to manage empty arms. Called 'Molly Bears,' a group takes orders one day a month to custom make a bear for your family, a symbol of your dead baby, loaded with the exact poundage you desire to replicate. I ordered one within the first month or so, was placed on a list and subsequently put the order out of my mind. An email came in October telling me my bear was processed and would be shipped soon so I knew to expect it, even if by now I didn't know what to expect.
       So here it sat, that box, that empty arms resource, that gift so desperately yearned for in the beginning. Here it sat, ignored as we bustled about our busy and fretful lives with no desire to pull out the cuddly bundle of grief again. Shall I be honest? I don't want it anymore. Into our routine we have weaved a web that includes our son and yet side steps a large amount of the grief that accompanies thoughts of him. His name is mentioned frequently enough by his sisters, his blue blanket and Griffin bear still migrate regularly in the home, winding their way into beds at night and snuggling up to cold hands in car seats. So this memento, he is an intruder sitting invisible in his box. If I open it, what would I find? Fresh grief in that new reminder?
Yet the pressure of not crossing it off my list bothers me; packing away something I requested in his honor is rude. And cowardly really, if I break it down. Waiting until my family leaves to do it is cowardice at its best.
       The basest part of me now is a mother and here I should be willing to share their brother with my daughters and my son with my husband, lay bare the rawness of emotion as I slit the tape and pop the cardboard seams. But not now, not today. They are gone and I am finally alone and I am content. Calmly enough I begin.

      I asked for seven pounds and the weight always surprises me, seems heavier than I remember. I compare the size of this minky soft blue bear with the tiny newborn I held so briefly. This bear is huge by comparison, and no newborn floppiness exists like in the bear we use now to commemorate our loss.

       I find myself slightly transfixed by him as I pull him out. This bear is large, and serious and so perfectly right for right now. I feel strange as I look at him, this thing I wanted to ignore and now can't help but admire.
I don't want a newborn anymore. My baby wouldn't be that way today. I set the seven-pound bottom on my lap and he sits upright, holding his own head and arms and torso comfortably, the pressure seemingly more age appropriate than I could ever have imagined. My hands fit under his arms and when I lift this silly bear, it is almost like lifting an infant. My baby would be nearing ten months now, probably tipping the scales in the seventeen-pound range, and quite rightly the same height of the stuffed animal perched on my knee.

       When I ordered it, I knew I was on a wait list, thrust into an unknown time frame for the delivery of our bear. It chapped me to have to wait, though the order itself was somewhat forgotten not so long after. And after all I've admitted tonight, however much we didn't want to acknowledge the box after all, it is in the end, much more pleasant a reminder than I was envisioning, provoking a few tears as merely the thoughts of what should be settle over me.
       I'm not sorry that I waited to look. It might take time to let this new lovey settle into our hearts and home, perhaps perched on a shelf rather than tossed about, maybe waiting for the right moment to bring up our Griffin as a family and really honor him, not as a trinket or toy but as we would want him to be present in our every day.