Who Am I?

I wonder every day who Owen would be if he was here. He would have just turned a year old. What would his smile look like? Would he hold his breath when he belly laughs so hard and then squeal with delight? What would he smell like? What would that place in between his cheek and shoulder taste like when I kissed it? What new foods would he be trying? Would he be a boobie monster like his big brother was at that age? Would he be walking yet? Would he be smiling sneakily when told not to do something? Would he chase after the cat and pull his tail? Would he love car rides and strolls through the park? Would his little lion stuffy be so well loved that the velvet on the nose had worn to nothing? What would he think of the Christmas tree? I think he would have loved it.

So many what if’s. So many never will be’s. He is no more. He exists only in our hearts and in the stars above me.

What would our family be like? Would his big brothers fight over who gets to hold him? Would they take him out for walks? Would they show him off to friends with pride? Would his daddy snag him out of my arms the minute he walked through to door from work? Would he tickle him and chase him around the couch on his knees? What places would we have visited by now? What new things would we have seen?

That family is no more. We carry on but we are missing one of our own.

Who would I be?

Who would I be if Owen was here? Who would I be if I didn’t have this birth trauma, CICU trauma, taking him off life support trauma? Who would I be if I didn’t have the vision of my son holding his dying brother forever burned in my memory? Who would I be if I didn’t carry the pain of our other kids never meeting him? Who would I be if my relationships with family and friends hadn’t changed they way they did? If I didn’t witness the raw, brutal grief spilling out of my husband when he thinks no one is looking?

That person is no more. She died too. But there was no funeral for her, no public goodbye. Instead, she sat in the dark, staring at the wreckage, stunned by the sight of the huge gaping hole in…everything. She went in. She swam around in the darkness, in the post apocalyptic world she now inhabited. And she changed.

I changed. And though I look the same, I am forever altered. Crippled, disabled, disfigured and mangled. But you don’t see it. You don’t see that every morning I wake up and I look around again and the truth wraps her arms around me and says “yes, it is still real, darling.” And I choose to stand up, some days limping, and do it all over again.

This is me, strong and broken. Happy and sad.

I wonder though…who would I be if my baby hadn’t died?