While I Wait

Someone once told me you need a whole year - every day in every month - to heal from a loss. You need to experience that loss through your birthday, their birthday, an anniversary, Christmas, Mother's Day, etc. You get the idea. And then you can begin healing and...dare I say... moving on. I have repeated this advice to many over the years.

There are different reasons we experience loss. Like a break-up for instance. They're out there and you can wonder how they are and maybe run into them at the coffee shop on Sunday morning and have that awkward "this is my new girlfriend" moment. Or maybe a death where they're not "out there" anymore and you can have all the feelings of "what if" and memories that soften with time.

But today, I have no words to describe, with any sanity, what I feel. My loss fills me with complete emptiness and I can't begin to explain it to myself or begin to wonder the impact it will have on my daughter. And the experience has left me with a lost identity - am I a mother if they say I'm not? If she's still out there but I can't feel her heartbeat or hear her voice, is she really mine?

The Supreme Court said something like they "appreciated my sincere interest in her but...". I am insulted by that very sentence. My sincere interest? She is my daughter, for God's sake. The least I can give her is fucking "interest"! I should be obligated to give her all that I am for the next thirteen years! I should be obligated to love her, support her, cry for her and yes, fight for her. But not according to them. They even took away my opportunity to fight - to simply "ask" them if I can raise my daughter. They said, "thanks, but don't even ask".

I don't doubt that she'll know I've done everything I can do to keep her. I have spent years begging. I hired the best attorneys. I've spent over $100K. I've prayed as hard as Mary herself! I don't regret a minute. And I'd do it all another 816 days for just another day with her hand in mine. Just one more day twirling her around the mall with her little poodle purse - I would give a thousand lives.

So, today might be the third day of that first year but there will never be healing and I will never move on. I'm certain, however, that I'll be stronger and fight harder and someday I'll tell her I did everything I could - that I fought like a mother fights for her child - and she will be proud of me while I wait.