Christmastime, again.

It's Christmastime again.

I find myself one moment so excited for Gus's first Christmas, excited to see my family, to sit back and have a boozy drink and watch my little boy crawl wildly around my mom's living room... and the next minute I'm reeling with disbelief that I have a living son and a dead daughter, that almost two years ago I actually lived through the horror of Nina-Lou's death and birth.  That I have a beautiful dress for a two year old packed away in a box, which I can't bear to give away.  That at one time I was pregnant with her, and I was such a different person.  I miss her and I miss that old me.  I like the new me, too, and I like my life as her mom and Gus's mom.  Both of my kids have given my life a certain richness for which I'm indescribably grateful.  But I wish they were both here.  It feels so good to get to take care of Gus, to watch him grow.  I want to hug and kiss Nina-Lou so bad sometimes that my guts just ache.

This Christmas may be the last one I spend with my dad.  He is nearing the end of his life; he knows it and so do all the rest of us.  My dad is the coolest, smartest, most exceptional person I have ever met, and it's not just me that thinks so.  He makes an impression on everyone he meets.  He's an incredible guy, and I'm so lucky to have been raised by him.  He's still here, but he doesn't go out much anymore, he doesn't get dressed every day, and he spends a lot of time sleeping.  He knows he's at the end, and he's made it clear that he is just so grateful for family and the bond that we all share.  He just wants to spend these moments with us.  It feels so good to be loved like that by my dad, and to love him back.

This year, I feel about how I expected and hoped I would feel two years after our loss.  I am still aching for my daughter, but I have found happiness in this life without her.  I had heard that the pain never goes away, that it only gets easier to bear, and I understand that a little better now.  I still cry about her, and I still think about her every day.  Two years is a long time, and two years is nothing.  I have no idea how I'll feel 5 years, 10 years, 30 years from now.  Right now, these pangs of sorrow are rather precious, and to feel them is a luxury.

Love, and melancholy, and joy, and grief, and laughter, and tears, and emptiness, and fullness.  I am awash in a sea of it.  There is new life and old life and lost life churning and swirling all around, and part of me wants desperately to try and grab it and hold it and sort it out and feel it all.  But I know that I just have to kind of sit with it, and let it wash over and around me and everyone else, like it is wont to do.