if I could do it over...

Dear Puck,

Today I sat here wondering how different life would be if you had been born healthy and whole. Life wouldn't have changed much for me. I guarantee you that I would have felt like things were infinitely harder and certainly more busy, but the routine and the things I took for granted...and even the complaints I had would have remained the same.

There were definitely times in my mommy life where I let frustration get the better of me. Times where I yelled "WHAT!" at the two year old who incessantly asked, "Mom, ma, mommy, mama, mum?" Times where I ignored the cries of my children as they pounded on the locked bathroom door just so I could have two minutes of peace to myself. Times where I cried from sheer exhaustion because my daughter refused to sleep without me. And there were times as a wife when I railed against the unfairness of a husband who worked terrible shifts and a dangerous job and who sometimes forgot to hang his coat up when he got home.

My complaints were so typical... and what I wouldn't give to have those complaints again.

Now my mommy life has turned into one of nurse. I count your breaths per minute and supply you with the medicine that prevents your heart from failing. How clean I keep my house or what I make for dinner, or how long your siblings watch TV for doesn't matter anymore. Every frustrated sigh, every fear, every want or need I've ever had - it's all so small now - pathetic.

And I can't help but wonder how simple life would be right now, if I only had Gabe and Edie to take care of. That sounds so horrible. But sometimes I think I can't possibly do this. I can't possibly live if I lose you. You are so wrapped up in my soul that I would never be able to entangle myself from your memory. If God takes you home I won't be left with a hole...I'll be left with that beautifully wretched piece of you, decaying me from the inside out...

So would I go back? Would I prevent a pregnancy that late February afternoon if it meant I would never have to stare that ugly, monstrous possibility of burying my own child in the face? If I could erase all memory of you and forget that you existed...would I?

No.

Because erasing you would be worse than losing you. It would be trading your life - your impact upon this world for a little bit of solitude...and nothing is worth that price. This journey it has to mean something and I think it's just this... Love is unconditional - it is given no matter the consequences - no matter the agony it might cause. That broken heart that beats within your chest has already imprinted upon my own...

And all I have to do is close my eyes and I can call up so many tiny attributes of your being. Your hair is darker than your siblings and it grows in such a unique way, cutting across your forehead and growing over your temples. Your eyes are such a dark blue that I am convinced you will be my first brown eyed child. Your nose is petite and perfect, just like your sisters, and you have a tiny red dot on the tip of it. Your lips are like mine, full and pouty and kissable; and you have perfect pianist fingers...long and beautiful.

How could I give any of that up... even if it meant a moment of peace?

I would do it all again so I could know those things about you. Those sweet little features only a mother notices. And although my life is harder now, and sometimes full of fear... it's also full of love, and hope, and all the tiny things I now take the time to notice.

I love you Puckaroo.

Mom.