Helping to spread our stories!

On Friday a local news station came to my house interview me for a story about loss and October 15th. I was a nervous wreck the whole week leading up to the interview and all morning Friday I kept wondering how I would get through it! The people that came to talk to me though, were kind and understanding and were so respectful of Alexandra's memory and our story. The interview aired last night and their respect really shines through, they did a great job in helping to share Alexandra's story, spread awareness, and make me look like I am not a spaz!
This is a big step on my path to having all of the babies lost recognized by the world. A step in helping to heal families and a step in the right direction to help Canada see that this cause, and our day needs to be acknowledged.
I wanted to share my interview! I'll apologize in advance for the shaky video, I recorded it with my camera off my TV.

October 15th - Wave of light

Yesterday was October 15th, pregnancy and infant loss remembrance day. Two days before on October 13th, I received an email letting me know that our work for this day had paid off. The Mayor's office had sent the proclamation declaring October 15th as Pregnancy and infant loss awareness day in my city. This is just one step on our path to having all of the babies lost here in Canada remembered and acknowledged.
With this wonderful news in my heart, we lit our candle last night. It was a new candle that we just bought, with a new candle holder. It's just for Oct. 15th, and says it will burn for 30 hours, so hopefully it will be our October 15th candle for the next 30 years!
Dayne better understands why this day is important this year and he was excited to be involved and take some time out of his day for Alexandra. He asked if she was watching, and of course, I said yes.
I think that Alexandra is proud of all the work we're doing in her honor, and I hope to help her to impact this world even more as time goes on.
Last night I was thinking of all the loss moms I have met over the last year and half. I hope that you all were having a peaceful day.

I Still Miss You

This morning I got up at 7am, like I do 6 days a week (not Sunday, Sunday I sleep in). I showered, got dressed, did my hair, made Dayne's breakfast, got him ready, and chatted with him as we walked to his school. I laughed as he told me funny little Dayne stories and I watched him run around in circles. After Dayne went into the school I ran my nephews swimming stuff into the office for him and I walked back home listening to music all the way. It was a regular morning, like every other morning...
When I arrived at home, I let the dog out, changed into my comfy pants and sat down on my bed. When the morning stopped in that minute, something clicked inside of me and I became overwhelmed with my grief. It's been almost a year and a half since we lost Alexandra, and still some days I am right back to where I was that day. Lost.
I thought I was having a bad minute and tried to compose myself, I have things to get done. But it wasn't just a minute, it was more than that as I quickly realized when the crying turned into sobbing. I sat on my bed, all alone in my house, sobbing. I still miss Alexandra, just as much as I did the day she left us and just as much as I will until the day I die. And some days the realization that this is my life now, that I'm never going to wake up and find my daughter still here with us, is just too much.
Today is one of those days.

Tree Lined Road

For most of my childhood I would have several, recurring dreams. One such dream was of me driving in a car, sometimes it was a car from my childhood, sometimes a car I didn't recognize, sometimes I would be in the front seat, sometimes the back, but the outside of the car always remained the same. The car drove down a tree lined road, the leaves on the trees were all yellow and falling off the trees, covering the ground in a blanket of yellow. It was always night time in the dream and there were always terrible, sad feelings brought about by it, like something terrible was about to, or just had, happened.
The other night we went for our usual trip to the cemetery. It was dark out though, something common for our trips there in the fall. Last year, we drove the back way in to the cemetery, this year, we drive a slightly different way. As we drove, I felt like I was back in that dream. This road was lined with trees, the leaves yellow and falling, the ground was covered in that fall blanket. It was shocking to me, thinking back to my dream, wondering if I was making a connection where there was none.
I haven't had that dream in years, and now I can't help but wonder if it was just a glimpse of my future, or just a grieving mom grasping at straws to make herself feel...better?

I want to write

I have been neglecting this place, my safe place. I relied on this blog to inform my family and express my feelings during the darkest days of my life. I don't know why I have been neglecting it. I could give a million excuses about our busy lives, our summer, the new school year, but I'm not going to do that.
I will say that things certainly have been busy here. This summer I made such a huge effort to make sure that Dayne experienced all the things he missed last summer while he sat, mostly at home with me, while I was grieving. He has proclaimed this as the "best summer EVER!" and I knew in that moment that I accomplished exactly what I set out to do for him.
He has started school, full days. The first day, I cried. I miss my little guy and it reminds me, if Alexandra was here, I would still miss my boy, but I would have her here to keep me busy, to help the time go by more quickly.
I have been working on Alexandra things, having pregnancy and infant loss remembrance day recognized in my city. We are just waiting on the proclamation to be written now, as they have agreed to acknowledge this day here. I am proud of this. I do feel like I dropped the ball, I had big plans for some kind of walk or gathering for October 15th this year, and nothing seems to have gotten planned. I don't know where I went wrong, I don't know where the time went, I wish I could keep up with every single thing that I want to get done. Things will be accomplished, things will get done, but in time, and I want them done NOW!
One step at a time, right?
You think I would have an abundance of time on my hands, sitting here alone all day long, while Dayne is in school, so, I can't help but wonder, why I feel like there simply aren't enough hours in the day, or days in the week. And I want to write so much more than I am...

For my friend, I will...

Jenny is what I like to call my bestest best friend in the whole wide world. We first met when we were 12 and 13 years old, in grade 7. We had some ups and down in those first few years, but we quickly realized that ours was a friendship that would stand the test of time. And it has.

Through my loss, Jenny was there, no matter what I needed, she was there for me. Jenny, her husband and their daughter were all there for Alexandra's fundraiser, helping us find items, baking, helping with everything that they could, they were there with me the entire day.

My bestest best friend Jenny is pregnant with her second daughter. I happened to have some maternity clothes still kicking around my house, so I decided to give them to Jenny when I returned the items she had lent me for Alexandra...Items that have been sitting in Alexandra's nursery for over a year now. Last night I also decided that Jenny needed to have some of Alexandra's clothes. I have been holding onto them, unable to take them out of her dresser, unable to give them away. Something changed in me last night though, I decided that, for my friend, I would let go of some of those items and share them with someone who would be truly grateful for them. And when I gave them to Jenny, her response was just what I expected from her, so thankful and so kind. First making sure that it was ok and I would be ok giving up these items.

Jenny and I are crossing a new bridge together, each dealing with something incredibly difficult with the other one. I feel like I have traumatised my dear friend with my loss, I have given her a new concern that she didn't realize was there before, and I feel terribly about that. But despite her own feelings, she stood with me, looking through Alexandra's stuff today. She looked at my daughter's pictures with me and she cried, while I, as usual, fought off the tears until she left.

Standing in my reality is hard for her because she is my friend and she feels sad for me, and because it is scary for her. Standing in her reality is hard for me because I don't want to hurt or scare her and because she is pregnant and I wish that I was, and she is having a daughter and I wish that I had my daughter. So, the two of stood together today, by each other's sides, in each other's realities, scared and sad, but together. Because that is what friends do, and I am so grateful to have a friend in Jenny.

The Hawks Are Everywhere

I look forward to seeing hawks because of what I feel is a connection between the hawks and my daughter. I have spoke of this before, but for those that haven't read from the beginning, we started seeing the hawks around the time that we lost our daughter. I noticed that whenever I would be sitting on the couch in my living room looking out the window, in a state of complete despair, missing my daughter, I would see a hawk, off in the distance, circling in the sky. I had never noticed these hawks before.

Losing Alexandra has changed me in such a profound way, where I would once glance at the hawk and carry on, I now stop to watch. I stop to look at the flowers, the trees, the little birds chirping. I see jack rabbits hopping around. I notice little miracles in everything. I know that some people lose their faith when they lost a child, I can completely understand how that could happen, I mean, really, how could you not question things a little bit, at least for a minute, but the opposite happened for me.
Last night on the way to the cemetery, Steve and I chatted, we discussed he idea that when you die, you may cease to exist. Steve questions things in his head a lot, and he is in a very different place than me at the moment. I asked him, how could he not believe that there is something more out there now, when he had discussed his belief that the hawks must have something to do with Alexandra, less than a year ago. He is just questioning things right now, and that's ok, and probably more than that, it's good that he's searching within himself for the answers that will make him the most comfortable.
At the cemetery, I wiped Alexandra's headstone, had a few minutes with her, organized her stuffed animals, chatted with Dayne about the mushrooms around Alexandra's grave. It's been raining a lot, so I explained that the rain makes the mushrooms grow and then I explained the story that my mom told me when I was younger, about the possibility that little fairies reside under mushrooms. It was kind of neat to me because I had just received Alexandra's new treasure bean, with a fairy on it, and here I was, explaining fairies to Dayne, and maybe Alexandra was listening too.
After we were finished visiting with Alexandra, I headed down the hill to my Grandfather's grave, to clean it up. I sat in the grass with my scissors trimming the grass around it, wiping away the dirt and dust and talking to my son about his great grandfather. There are water taps in the cemetery, but the one we could locate was not working, so Steve wandered around with the bucket looking for another tap. As Steve walked down the road directly in front of me and down a small hill, we all heard a loud hawk cry. All three of us stopped, turned and looked up. We all saw it then, high up in a pine tree, perched on the very top branch, looking directly at Steve. Steve yelled up to me "Do you see it?" and I yelled back, "Yes!" And as Steve went to move, as if to say "STOP! Look at me!" The hawk screamed again, and every time Steve moved it would screech and stare at him.
In my mind I thought of the postal workers in my city who had been attacked by a large hawk, probably as big as the one I was looking at right now, but the hawk didn't move, it just stared at Steve screeching. Dayne became excited at this encounter and jumped, yelling, "Hey hawk! Hi!" and the hawk turned it's head looking at him. I told him to be quiet, so he didn't scare the bird and we began to talk about what hawks like to eat as we stared up at it.
This bird seemed fixated on Steve and, while it may have meant nothing more than a cool encounter to him, to me, this was just another little sign from our daughter. He dared to question and here was a sign, screeching at him from on top of a tree, within eye shot of Alexandra's grave. It was as if the hawk was telling Steve to believe.

These moments are all around us, and I do believe if we just stop and listen, we will hear it, if we take a moment to look, we will all see. And with so many signs everywhere I look, how can I NOT believe that my little girl is somewhere around me, checking in, watching over us, letting us know that she is ok, she is with us and she misses us as much as we miss her?