Alice

originally blogged here

It is 2 years today since our sweet Alice Buttons was born. Tomorrow it will be 2 years since she died.

2 years.

After 2 years I have nothing profound to say about life and about death. Nothing insightful or all that meaningful. Life can be short. Death can be unexpected and unfair and at the wrong time. I have learned that people don't like talk about death. And when you say you had a baby that died, it is as if they didn't hear you. They move on in the conversation. They leave those words hanging. I imagine that if you could see these conversations, you would see those little-big words, 'dead baby,' just hovering there, waiting for the person to let them into their ears and into their brains. Most people don't. They don't want to think about what that means.

Some very special people do let those words in. They ask you about her and they talk about other babies that have died. They send beautiful balloons on her birthday and messages of love. They are the people that say her name, that say how shitty it is and they talk about her like she was here.

Because for us, she was here. She will always be here. What I have learned about life and death is that every day of every week of 2 whole years you can think about someone and you can desperately miss someone that you never knew. What I have learned about life and death is that I am sure for every day for every year for the rest of my life, I will miss someone that I never got the chance to know. What I have learned is that you can fill up your heart with a new life but a bit of you will always be missing.

Someone will always be missing. Alice will always be missing. Missing and missed.