This Day.

       I've been crossing days off the calendar, letting the time flow through me languidly, waiting and watching my life unfold. The last few weeks have been rushed with holidays and sick kids and a death in my extended family. I've barely been able to think straight, which in itself means that I haven't been doing much grief work. My phone called my attention to that today.
     I got a new one, a cell phone, as a Christmas gift and that upgraded all my apps. I was excited to download all the fun ones and grabbed "Timehop" as one of the first. I wasn't thinking about how it might catch me off guard, how it might plunge me into the distant past as well as the recent history. At first it was fun, showed my handsome husband in the sunshine on a trip to Mexico two years ago. Shortly after, a few holiday celebrations and cute photos of my girls growing.
       It was the first birthday it flashed on Dec 28th, my middle daughter's traumatic birth and subsequent NICU stay, that really started me thinking how off-putting dredging up my past posts may be. I kept peeking each day as the alert came up. "Your Timehop is ready," it would chime, striking me with a note of dread and promise, wondering if the cute would balance the bits of sorrow.
       Cue today. January 11, 2015. There is nothing significant about this date in my life. There was nothing of note in my past, or so I thought. I wasn't prepared to see anything evocative when I opened the app so I was surprised at the three posts and the emotion they elicited. Can you read them? Do they balance?

The frustration of a mother trapped with a daughter weeks old, in  the jail that is the NICU, battling peers that mean well but do not understand. I remember that life, the exhaustion and impatience and helplessness and the lack of compassion. I hated that life, couldn't wait to escape from it.

Maybe the next one evens it out, the adorable grins and young little limbs, flailing in their fun and freedom. I  don't know if I have that moment on video, it doesn't exist in the playback of my mind. I shared it with my husband and he smiled but shook his head, as it obviously didn't ring any bells for him either.

But the last. Alas, the last. The excitement is still a palpable memory for me. The amazing feeling of knowing my body had carried a baby to a healthy term, the slight thrill of waiting for an unknown person to make his or her debut. I read every word of that post, recalling too simply the awe of anticipation in the new year, the snow and frozen air outside that day. I remember taking photos and luxuriating with my girls in the warmth of our house, the laughter and the speculation finally allowed to run free.

     I had never known the real happiness of carrying a baby all that way, until that day. Until today, I wouldn't have remembered it this way, juxtaposed with the years past, grief overlapping silly, overlapping unbound excitement. When I say it this way, I mean it from the bottom up, the first post pulling past grief from murky depths I have explored too many times. Since then, my life has been layered with other grief and happiness, other experiences clouding our days. So it's interesting, if not altogether welcome yet, to read it all. To read the mixed messages of the waiting for our son, before we knew him, knowing full well that soon the day will come, when one year ago he arrived...when one year ago he was gone.

I can't say I'm looking forward to looking back. Will next year be different? Everything shaded in a different light, the future so unsure right now and yet, just a hop through time away.