Boogers on the Wall

Lost – it’s a word I have been thinking a lot about lately.

Honestly, I’ve thought a lot about it the past seven years; since we “lost” our baby.

I’ve never liked to use that phrase.

Did I misplace him like I would my car keys? Did I set him down and forget where he was left?

Did I toss him aside and hope he’d still be there when I returned?

No. I cared for him and loved him his entire life. He was safely tucked next to my heart the whole time.

But still he was lost.

I read a phrase this week in a novel by Kristin Hannah. That’s what has turned my thoughts to once again thinking about “losing someone.”  The first page of “The Nightingale” reads

“Lost.

It makes it sound as if I misplaced my loved ones; perhaps I left them where they don’t belong and then turned away, too confused to retrace my steps.

They are not lost. Nor are they in a better place. They are gone. As I approach the end of my years, I know that grief, like regret, settles into our DNA and remains forever a part of us.”

Amen.

My grief keeps settling. It will forever be a part of me.

Yet I still keep living. Living with the grief I have absorbed into my psyche.

Quite frankly if anyone has been lost through his whole losing-a-baby thing, it’s me.

There have been times when I have felt out of place and forgotten. There have been times when I have felt like I could not be recovered. Like I was unable to be found.

Like I was … lost.

I am the one lost. Not him. Not my beautiful angel baby. He wasn’t lost. Just gone. Ripped from my arms before he could even settle. Before he could even sigh.

So I continue drifting. Lost sometimes. Lost for words. Lost for comfort. Lost for clarity and understanding.

They say that when someone you love dies, they are “lost.” I say that sometimes it is those who remain alive that are lost.