(no subject)
I've been thinking a lot about Ava lately. Not a day goes by that I don't think of her, but in recent weeks it's been even more so. She'd be a preschooler now. She'd be turning three at the end of March. I just peaked in at Sean, sound asleep and dreaming in his crib, and my whole body aches to know that he'll never know his cousin Ava. I'll never know my niece.
I've spent the last several years focusing on how devastating the loss of Ava is for my sister and her husband -- they lost their daughter, before she ever had a chance to live. It's a loss, a grief, that's unfathomable to me. As much as I try to understand the depths of it, I know it's something that I truly couldn't even begin to understand unless I lived it myself.
Lately, as I interact with Alivia...smother her with kisses, threaten to nibble on her thighs, and do all kinds of goofy things to make her laugh...it's truly hitting me what I lost. My niece. There are times the grief just floods me, and there are times I'm just incredibly angry, at who or what, I don't know, but I'm horribly angry at what was taken from Ava, from my sister, from all of us. The promise of this little girl, with all the unknown potential that she had.
I wonder who Ava would have been. Would she have been a girly-girl? Wearing dresses all the time, wanting to be a princess, mothering her dolls? Would she have been racing around the playground in overalls and disheveled pig-tails, with a smear of dirt across one cheek as she played rough-and-tumble with the little boys? Would she have been a budding artist, up to her elbows in finger-paints, glue in her hair, and creating wild abstract wonders at the art easel? Would she have been a miniature scientist, collecting rocks/shells/leaves/shriveled dandelion blooms, crawling in the grass on her hands and knees as she followed the meanderings of a ladybug? I've imagined her in each of these scenarios, and the fact that she'll never get to do any of these things makes my heart clench and my lungs feel like they're going to collapse.
It's not fair. It's not right. She was a daughter, and granddaughter, a niece and a cousin. And she's not here with us.
I've spent the last several years focusing on how devastating the loss of Ava is for my sister and her husband -- they lost their daughter, before she ever had a chance to live. It's a loss, a grief, that's unfathomable to me. As much as I try to understand the depths of it, I know it's something that I truly couldn't even begin to understand unless I lived it myself.
Lately, as I interact with Alivia...smother her with kisses, threaten to nibble on her thighs, and do all kinds of goofy things to make her laugh...it's truly hitting me what I lost. My niece. There are times the grief just floods me, and there are times I'm just incredibly angry, at who or what, I don't know, but I'm horribly angry at what was taken from Ava, from my sister, from all of us. The promise of this little girl, with all the unknown potential that she had.
I wonder who Ava would have been. Would she have been a girly-girl? Wearing dresses all the time, wanting to be a princess, mothering her dolls? Would she have been racing around the playground in overalls and disheveled pig-tails, with a smear of dirt across one cheek as she played rough-and-tumble with the little boys? Would she have been a budding artist, up to her elbows in finger-paints, glue in her hair, and creating wild abstract wonders at the art easel? Would she have been a miniature scientist, collecting rocks/shells/leaves/shriveled dandelion blooms, crawling in the grass on her hands and knees as she followed the meanderings of a ladybug? I've imagined her in each of these scenarios, and the fact that she'll never get to do any of these things makes my heart clench and my lungs feel like they're going to collapse.
It's not fair. It's not right. She was a daughter, and granddaughter, a niece and a cousin. And she's not here with us.