Moving on

Those words are hard to see on the screen. But it is happening.

Incredibly slowly, like a glacier melting, I seem to have moved into a phase that lies just a hair, a drop, beyond grief.

The episodes of being ambushed by sadness are infrequent, almost non-existent.  It's not that I don't miss Dylan, but I am just removed enough that I can call up those feelings when I want to think about him.  I can look at pictures and videos and choose to cry, to laugh, to miss the sound of his sweet voice.  When I do look at them, it feels slightly surreal.  We had this beautiful child, and now he's gone from us. But the sadness that this activity generates is still prompted by me, instead of it surprising me.

When I am with Jason and Colin nowadays, it feels complete.  It no longer feels as though someone is missing, for whatever reason.  I never thought it would feel that way again.  In the 2008-2009 time period, Jason and I tried on and off for several months to conceive a child.  Eight different inseminations, some without fertility drugs, some with.  I even underwent acupuncture.  (I figured it couldn't hurt.)  But the practice of unsuccessful conceiving can wear on you.  We made a conscious decision to give up around Thanksgiving 2009, after so many cycles of disappointment.  We decided that the three of us were perfect, that we would joyfully embrace our family as it was. And here's the thing: we really were joyful about accepting this life as perfect.

Then Dylan surprised us by being conceived successfully just a few months later.  He also survived the platelet/antibody issue we have when we conceive (which we learned about when Colin was born) that can be fatal to a newborn. But within his first six months, we inevitably learned that he was only supposed to be with us a short while, at least physically.  Two years and 18 days, to be exact. I still marvel at the ride the three of us we were on with him.  Those two years reshaped our lives completely.

Now, he binds us three even closer in a shared experience.  It was as if we were meant to be completely changed through this experience, and then pick up where we had left off in 2009--the happy three. But different.

As I move beyond grief, there are still parts of my life in which I still feel terribly lost.  To be blunt, I am not sure what to do with this blog.  I have always loved to write, wanted to write something important.  One of the greatest by-products of our life with Dylan was the opportunity to choose a brushstroke and a canvas and paint his story.  I wrote not just about a dying child, but about living with Dylan, caring for him, watching his little, fleeting successes, witnessing his decline, and how much love and pain it etched onto my heart.  How deeply amazing this journey was. How he made all our lives matter so much more.  How for me, he was evidence of God's hand on us.  Then I wrote for many months about losing him, learning to live without him.

But now I wonder, how could there be anything else to say that was so important, so enriching, so tragic and beautiful all at one time?  What would I ever write that would be so meaningful as that?  I used to feel a physical void, a void of time, that was left after I did not have my youngest baby to care for anymore.  Now I feel the terrible void of feeling that nothing I could contribute now would be nearly as important as that wonderful story.

Now, what?

Go back to living without writing, as I did before Dylan?  It doesn't feel right. Writing equals awareness, awake-ness, for me.  Dylan opened me up wide, and I prefer the opened-up me, the changed me.  And the blog exemplifies that version of me.  But I also know that I cannot continue to write in a blog titled "Dylan, diagnosed."

So, much like the process of grieving and finding a "new normal" after the death of a loved one, I must find a new purpose for this blog, and a new title.  I am overwhelmed by the task.  But I am compelled to try.