My little bunny.

My therapist asked me yesterday, if what remains of Nina-Lou were a ball of energy, if I have a sense of what that energy would be like.  I think that what she was getting at was, how can I find peace with what is left of her.  My therapist asked me if I could imagine that that ball of energy could say to me, "I'm ok, mom.  It just wasn't my time.  I'll always be here."  I simply said, no, I can't; those thoughts aren't a comfort to me.  My problem with that idea is that it implies that my baby had these adult thoughts and feelings, which I just don't buy.  She was a baby.  She knew nothing more than my womb, my heartbeat, the sound of my voice and the other sounds that filtered through my belly.  She was utterly innocent.  It also implies that she is somehow watching over ME, which isn't the way it's supposed to be.  I should be caring for HER.  I should be telling HER that I'll always be here.  I could drive myself completely mad thinking about all of the things I should be doing.  

For me, rather than imagining that my baby is some sort of guardian angel or spirit who watches over me, I imagine myself holding her tiny body to my chest, and then feeling her melt back into me.  I know that eventually I will have to forgive my body for whatever it did to fail her in the end, but in the meantime, I just want to think of her as my sweet baby, who I love, and hold her spirit inside my heart, protected, warm, safe.  I don't ever want to let go of her.  

There is this chidren's book called The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown.  In it, the little bunny tells his mom that he's going to run away.  He comes up with increasingly grandiose ways in which he will escape her, and she comes up with even more grand ways in which she will stay with him.  I used to find this story a little disturbing... I mean, geez, this poor bunny just wants a little independence.  But, having now experienced the loss of my only child (whoa, I had to take a little break after typing that phrase... I still can't believe that I am a person who has lost a child), I have a different take on it.  It's about the unbreakable bond between a mother and a child.  If, at some point in the story, the little bunny had said, "Then I will stop my heart from beating, and I won't be alive any more, and you won't ever be able to hold me again," then I imagine that his mother would have said, "Then I will hold your spirit inside of me and think of you every day until I am also gone.  For you will always be my little bunny."  

My little bunny.  My Nina-Lou.  I just can't let her go.  I'm quite sure I never will.