Missed

These pictures that I take, each one has its own separate sound track and story that stays tightly bound to it, and it will replay in my head when I look long enough and go back to that time and place. It helps me remember exactly what was unfolding right before the shutter closed. I remember the reason I thought to take the photo. When i take a picture Im almost always doing it to try and remember something, embedding my emotions into a photo and knowing I will get to always visit the experience for as long as I have the image. I post a picture like the one above, and people might glance over it, and make note of a mother caring for her sick little girl. Others might look closer and see the two of them staring into one another-- both of them looking to the other for comfort. Tessa for relief from high fevers and a persistent dry cough that had kept her up most of the night crying and calling out: "mommy." and Cole looking for a sign that her presence lying next to her can somehow finally calm and quiet her baby long enough for the both of them to get some sleep. Tessa looks like she is saying with her eyes, "why wont this stop?"All of that is true. And you would be right to get that from the picture. When I look at this picture, Tessa being sick is just a small side note, all I see is Cole staring into the eyes of her little girl that needs her, a little girl that insisted and persisted that it be her that gave her comfort and snuggles that only a mom can give, a little girl that has no idea that her mom has been laboring a miscarriage for the last two days and is in her own quiet pain and grieving. Tessa is sick. Cole is hurt. And all the while in that magic way that dogs know people and their secrets, Wendy has taken her place at their side and does not leave them. Stays still, stays quiet, and just sits by the side. Its been a confusing week. I have heard people say miscarriage so many times in my life, and I recognize it to be a sad event when it is mentioned, and I know that it is common. I know it is the reason people say never tell others your happy news too early because you just might have to burden them with your sadness soon after. I knew these sorts of things about miscarriage. The thing that both Cole and I had not wrapped our heads around, was the fact that once the baby was lost, she had to still carry it for an unknown amount of time, it stayed. That was the hardest thing for Cole to take, the baby was lost, and she still had to carry it. Their is so much finality when someone tells you that the baby you were excited about is gone, but how can she feel like its over when her body still thinks its pregnant? The hardest thing to hear was that she would have to go into labor at some point, and actually feel cramps and contractions to pass it. Cole looked online for way too long, read too many experiences, read so much. You know when you start finding things like tiny coffins organized by trimester for your miscarriage that you have dug too deep. It felt strange to have to now turn around and make calls to stop people from being happy for us. Right when we thought we had thought of everyone, a Facebook message would role through for Cole congratulating us. We told too many people too early. We would have to find out who they had told, and ask them to please make sure everyone they told knew what had happened, and so on, and so on. What a mess. The most awkward thing about sharing this kind of news is the assumption of how sad or devastated Cole is, nobody knows really what to say. Of course its sad for so many reasons, but there was this strange feeling of relief that crept in and took over. We just kept thinking that something must have been really wrong for the body to react this way. We found relief in the idea that her body was protecting her. Nature took over. For all of the millions of possibilities and combinations of who you end up with, there are just as many combinations and reasons that things can go wrong. And we have absolutely no control or say over who ends up coming out and saying hello in the end. We have been spending lots of quiet days at the house, Tessa being so sick, and LBs needs kept her mothering full time, but she was able to rest, she was able to hurt, and she had all of us loving on her whenever she needed us. There is no rush for things to feel normal again. Thats the luckiest thing in our life right now, that we have time to be around one another. Thats where I am at. With her. Always.