Wanting

Life is grand, and wouldn't you like to have it go as planned?

-Aimee Mann

How do you justify the death of your child?

Her death is the first thing that I have experienced in my life that has truly uprooted how I view the world and those around me. For the first time, I truly cannot have what I want. To be sure, things have not gone to plan for me in the past. Loved ones have died, relationships, both romantic and platonic, have ended without reason; I’ve been turned down from countless jobs.

 But, I could justify those. Maybe if I had gotten that job, I would not have the one I have now. Perhaps if things had worked out with that boyfriend in college, I would never have met my husband, et cetera, et cetera. Losses in the past have colored who I’ve become, but never been something I couldn’t move past. I’ve never felt like something that I so desperately want is so far out of reach.

 Does that make me lucky for having progressed twenty-nine years without the kind of gut-wrenching pain and searing want I find myself facing now? I’m not sure.

 Either way, I have never wanted something more than to have her live. I feel this constant tug as I move through each day—she should be here, inside me still. I feel like there is a veil dropped between us; she is so close, but so unreachable. I still can feel her kick, due to a cruel mind trick that I have found is called “phantom kicks.” I have my few photos of her, my memories, and her little box, and soon we will have her ashes home, but I do not have her, and I never will.

 I just don’t know how to square this deep want of the past with the forward progression I have always centered my life around.