(no subject)
My darling Zoosha,
I never really wrote about that week in the hospital, the only week you actually existed in my life. (The only week you actually existed at all.) Still, everything that happened is crystal clear. You became a piece of me. You still very much are.
I keep thinking what would have been if things hadn't folded out as they did. Two years ago I was this angry little girl, so worried that a new baby sister would spin her world into a vertigo... unrecognizable, different, strange, awful. Selfish thoughts. I didn't want you, never, even down to the very night you were born-- I was sitting at that basketball game whining about how much I hated you. Then you came and I'd never loved any other person so easily, so much. But you, my darling, were not destined for this world. No. You spent a week in agony, slowly dying as I wept to myself under a coat in the waiting room while the same episodes of MASH boomed over the television. How hellish. The world was never so ugly as it was the day that doctor pushed me aside and told our parents that their new little girl wasn't going to see another year, another month... not even another week. And no amount of my apologies, or tears, no matter how loudly I screamed up on that helipad, could change that. Suddenly, you were my world and it was about to come crashing down.
I never thought I'd wake up on a Christmas morning with such a heavy heart. (And people think saying, "I love you," is hard. They've never tried to say, "Merry Christmas," with a shattered heart.) I never imagined that instead of picking out books to read to you, I'd be picking out clothes to wear to your funeral.
You would have been such a beautiful little girl-- I can imagine your brown curls and blue eyes, basking in all the affection that would have come your way. That isn't the case. Here's what is: you are the reason I still truly believe in God. I don't have the heart to believe that you were only good for one week on earth. No; if I can't believe you're growing up in Heaven, then I can't believe in anything.
Love, Karlie
I guess the worst part of remembering this (and this includes the guilt, the love, all the potential of being 'the coolest big sister ever' that was wasted) is... perhaps, just perhaps, if she had lived, that I really wouldn't have loved her at all. That I would still be the same selfish girl, cursing the world through clenched lips, despising such a beautiful thing because I couldn't take the intrusion.
I never really wrote about that week in the hospital, the only week you actually existed in my life. (The only week you actually existed at all.) Still, everything that happened is crystal clear. You became a piece of me. You still very much are.
I keep thinking what would have been if things hadn't folded out as they did. Two years ago I was this angry little girl, so worried that a new baby sister would spin her world into a vertigo... unrecognizable, different, strange, awful. Selfish thoughts. I didn't want you, never, even down to the very night you were born-- I was sitting at that basketball game whining about how much I hated you. Then you came and I'd never loved any other person so easily, so much. But you, my darling, were not destined for this world. No. You spent a week in agony, slowly dying as I wept to myself under a coat in the waiting room while the same episodes of MASH boomed over the television. How hellish. The world was never so ugly as it was the day that doctor pushed me aside and told our parents that their new little girl wasn't going to see another year, another month... not even another week. And no amount of my apologies, or tears, no matter how loudly I screamed up on that helipad, could change that. Suddenly, you were my world and it was about to come crashing down.
I never thought I'd wake up on a Christmas morning with such a heavy heart. (And people think saying, "I love you," is hard. They've never tried to say, "Merry Christmas," with a shattered heart.) I never imagined that instead of picking out books to read to you, I'd be picking out clothes to wear to your funeral.
You would have been such a beautiful little girl-- I can imagine your brown curls and blue eyes, basking in all the affection that would have come your way. That isn't the case. Here's what is: you are the reason I still truly believe in God. I don't have the heart to believe that you were only good for one week on earth. No; if I can't believe you're growing up in Heaven, then I can't believe in anything.
Love, Karlie
I guess the worst part of remembering this (and this includes the guilt, the love, all the potential of being 'the coolest big sister ever' that was wasted) is... perhaps, just perhaps, if she had lived, that I really wouldn't have loved her at all. That I would still be the same selfish girl, cursing the world through clenched lips, despising such a beautiful thing because I couldn't take the intrusion.