Milestones

I've been trying to write this post for going on a month now. It's been written and then rewritten several times in my head.

For some reason, kindergarten starting was like a brick landing on my head this year. For the most part, the anniversaries of Hope's death are getting, well, not better, but they're getting to be fairly standard, I guess. That isn't meant to sound cold. I'm just getting used to the way I start feeling in April, how it builds until June 1st, peaks from the 1st to the 5th, and then starts to improve as much as it ever will as we get into summer. It's my normal.

These milestones, though, they throw me for a loop.

I don't know if Hope would have started kindergarten this fall. I'm sort of really into holding kids back until you absolutely have to throw them into the big pond and let them swim. But then again, that, as with many other decisions, would depend largely on the child herself. And so, as I tried to see if telling myself that she might not have started this year would help, I realized that it wasn't so much the starting as the fact that we would have had a decision to make. But we didn't. We have a lovely preschooler who is thoroughly enjoying learning about numbers this week (from me). We have a smaller little one who can say "one, teeeeewwww" and identifies pink and green. But we have no one of kindergarten age.

And for some reason, that fact brought me back closer to the feeling of having empty arms, an empty nursery, a quiet, baby-less house than I have been in several years.

What to do, then, what to do.....Kindergarten in the public schools started here on Wednesday, August 25. So, I informed my hubby that the girls and I would be taking a field trip of our own that day. He doesn't really completely understand the effect that milestones have on me. Not because he is cold-hearted and unfeeling, but because he grieved differently five years ago and still does now. I'm thankful he is patient and supportive of my way, as well.

But....I did start to question myself. A friend in Enderlin had shared with me, shortly after we lost Hope, that she has a hard time with milestones - graduations, weddings, etc. that her daughter would have experienced. I'm so thankful for her sharing because it reminds me that there's nothing wrong with how I feel things. But still....I started to question, if it doesn't impact him as hard, am I somehow wrong?

Enter the morning of the 25th. Dentist appointment before heading to Enderlin. At that point, I hadn't really decided whether we should go or not. Before leaving, I stopped at the front desk to make an appointment for Miss Mouse and happened to be talking to a friendly lady who introduced herself and said she attends our church. She admired my Mouse.

Then she got fairly serious and asked if we hadn't lost a baby. I said we had. With tears in her eyes, she told me that she and her husband had, as well, and that it would have been her daughter's 21st birthday in August. She said that those milestones have always been really hard for her.

It's perhaps needless to explain how we spent the rest of our day.....when the girls had finished admiring all the "pretty flowers and rocks", we left two crayons at the cemetery.