What Do You Say to a Girl Like Me

It's hard to be gracious on days like this. So many people call and email and I say, "thank you" and then I begin to cry again. No one knows quite what to say. "It's unfair", "what can we do?", "what's next?" My life has been in limbo for so long. I'm sure I've complained excessively over the years. But today, I pray for stillness in the moments when it was still a "maybe".

I miss her.

My ring tone is her voice screaming, "Mommy, telephone!" Will I ever change it? My partner stopped our screen saver of her pictures flashing through one at a time. She couldn't look at it without crying. I would watch it and get lost in each frame. I hear her voice at the post office, in the lobby, in my dreams. When will any little person ever call me "mommy" again?

I ache to hear her voice.

I sold my house. Finally, I won't have to walk by her room and remember her there. I won't have to wonder how I'll ever change it or fill it with another baby. It's her's, alone. I won't have to keep telling myself to wash her handprints off the window. I can't do it. Instead, I will remember the happy times in that house - when she filled it with noise and messes and tantrums and laughter.