Friday afternoon.
I look up and realize the building is quiet. Lights are off, doors are closed. So familiar we are with each other that we no longer say goodbye, have a nice weekend, see you Monday.
Just, suddenly, I am one of the only ones left.
It is this way with the babylost community, it seems. Blogs go down, mothers stop updating. A baby is born, the announcement a final post. Time passes and grief’s screams quiet to whispers, the occasional sob. The words trickle away.
It is not quite two years since Joseph died and those who have walked this timeline with me have fallen away.
I have fallen away.
I remember when Joseph first died I read hungrily. I went back over and over and over to the same writers who helped me find my way through grief, and I was so angry when they stopped writing. Because I needed them, I didn’t understand that they no longer needed those like me. The lost. The babylost.
I rarely visit the community anymore. It is too hard to read the new stories of loss. I scroll through blogrolls and comments and I don’t recognize the names anymore. My cohort has come and gone. Most without saying goodbye.
It’s not intentional, this quiet. It just is.
Sometimes, when I have a moment, I indulge the sadness. I take a walk. I sit at the computer on a rare solitary evening and open my heart, check the tender places, whisper Joseph’s name.
And Finn. And Little Sun. And Peregrine, and Anja, and others.
I remember.
© Burning Eye
These are the things I'm made of 