Missing our baby girl

[A&K]

I’m missing our baby girl Gracie so much.  I miss all of the kids but today Gracie’s loss is overwhelming my broken heart.  I came across a pic of her and she looks like her baby brother Ryan.  I look at Ryan and my heart sinks because of the resemblance to Gracie.  She was such a happy baby.  So many loved her.  My heart is just broken.  It has been Eight months and 13 Days.  It feels like yesterday and years ago all at the same time.  And why am I missing her more than Lily and Lila and Noah?  I must be a horrible mommy.  

Katie

The first four is Gracie   The others are Ryan   

 

😢💔

[MartyT]

Katie, my dear, you are anything BUT a horrible mommy, and you have every right to miss your precious Gracie as much as you do. Love is love, and so is grief. It is whatever it is, and it certainly needs no rational explanation here. ❤️

[kayc]

A simple explanation, dear Katie, is that you have constant reminders of Gracie in Ryan.  That and the age at which she left makes it really tough.  You didn't get as long with Lily and Lila, and I reckon you had a lot of anticipatory grief over Noah that helped you with acceptance...even if you didn't know absolutely he'd die, you knew it was a possibility.  Just thinking what his life would have been like if he'd lived brings tears to my eyes.  I watched what my sister went through for 50 years, I was there taking care of her in the early years as she had to learn to talk again and even then most people couldn't understand her, watching her choke as she tried to eat, her life was never the same again.  It makes for having mixed feelings about it...missing her but also being glad for her that she no longer has to struggle.  No way to put this into words adequately, so much emotion, I don't even know how to begin to express it.

[A&K]

Thank you Marty and Kay

i feel like a bad mommy for not being that upset on April 2nd the first year angelversary of Noah’s passing.  It’s 8 1/2 months since Gracie passed and I’m already dreading September 11th being one year.  Kay maybe you’re right in that I knew Noah was brain dead and couldn’t survive.  But that breaks my mommy heart.  I’m just now getting into talking about our children’s deaths in therapy.  It’s so hard.  

Ryan is the love of my life as well as Caleb and seeing their faces and genetic similarities makes it difficult for sure.  

[kayc]

Katie,

When we are grieving in that early time (first couple of years anyway), our brains have been through trauma, shock, and are in grief fog, honestly, we can't be blamed for much anything we do!  They seriously aren't working right.  You of all people have been through so much, the hits just kept on coming.  That you functioned at all is amazing.  Please do not blame yourself for anything you did or didn't do or think or feel.  I'm glad you're getting into therapy and I really hope it's someone trained in grief.  My first counselor was not, although he'd told me he was.  He was a drug and alcohol counselor, not what I needed.  I don't think he set out to deceive me, but he fancied himself a counselor of everything...he totally was not!

[A&K]

We both miss our children.  😢

[MartyT]

My dear Katie and Alan, I thought of you and Butch and your precious children when I read this just now: To a deeply depressed person, suicide isn't selfish . . . ❤️

[MartyT]

And this: Tell Me About Those Left Behind  ❤️

[Widowedbysuicide]

Both very good articles @MartyT.

 

@A&K  Katie I hold you and your family firmly in my heart.  I'm so sorry you all have had so much loss and I, like many people on this forum, wish so much that I could help you all in some way.  Your children here on earth are beautiful angels and so are your angels in heaven.  Sending prayers for you all. 🙏

[MartyT]

7 hours ago, Widowedbysuicide said:

Both very good articles @MartyT.

Here's another: The Impossible Suicide

An excerpt:

My children, my parents, my friends, my supporters, my fans are better off without me.
What is that?
All of that is the depression speaking. The very tools where we or some friend could whack us in the head and say, “get over it and let’s get an action plan in place” escape anyone with this illness because those tools not only don’t resonate, they don’t exist in the vortex.
Suicide literally becomes a logical conclusion based on the wrong assumptions and horribly faulty math.
And it leaves profound holes in the people left behind. All death is infinite, of course, but I think the loss of a child and suicide are particular docks off of the island of shit that is loss.

[MartyT]

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[kayc]

22 hours ago, MartyT said:

My children, my parents, my friends, my supporters, my fans are better off without me.
What is that?
All of that is the depression speaking. The very tools where we or some friend could whack us in the head and say, “get over it and let’s get an action plan in place” escape anyone with this illness because those tools not only don’t resonate, they don’t exist in the vortex.
Suicide literally becomes a logical conclusion based on the wrong assumptions and horribly faulty math.

Very aptly put.  Trying to understand suicide reminds me of a Thomas Paine quote my son quoted me when he was a child because I was trying to make sense of my mom who was mentally ill.  "Thomas Paine - 'To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead."