To Our Baby Girl

 

Dear Baby Girl, my sweet Dorian, 

Twenty-five years ago today, you were born into Heaven. My heart died that day right along with you. I prayed for you, to have you, to hold you. I wanted you so desperately. I only had you long enough to know that He heard my prayers and then you were gone. Born asleep, never to know the pain that this life holds, but to also never know my complete love for you, which grieves me to this day. 

What would you have been like? Would you have had my eyes, my hair? Would you have liked to watch the birds, too? Would you have been a bashful beauty? Or, would you have been like your daddy, blue eyes, a sense of humor, an outgoing personality, and able to speak in public? These are things I will never know. 

What I am sure of is that you would have loved to read, just as your sisters and brothers do. I think that you would have loved My Little Pony, too. Maybe. The others are three against one on that one. 

On this day of I miss yous and what would have beens, I wanted to let you know that you are still very much a part of my heart. The two weeks of grief that I was allowed to have and still be considered normal and not a mental case are long past. Saying good-bye to you has become a part of who I am. You are not here. I won’t see you again until Heaven, however long or short a time that may be. Until then, my heart cries for you. 

I love you, baby girl. Have a beautiful birthday up there with all of our family. Please hug the folks for me.  

“There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love.” –Washington Irving 

 Image Source: Pixabay

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Happy Anniversary...

...to my sweet fang. :) You're my zing!




Happy Anniversary. Here's to at least 32 more years together. I love you.


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Happy Anniversary, Grandma and Grandpa

On 1 May 1938, my maternal grandparents, William Howard Taft Spence and Maggie Pressley, were married. Grandpa was almost 28 years old and had been previously married. Grandma had just turned 21 and this was her first marriage.

While Grandpa had one child with his first wife, he and Grandma had seven children together, two boys and five girls. My mother was the fifth child (and third daughter) and the first to be born in a hospital. Their sixth child, a little girl named Margaret, died as a toddler.

I was told that Grandma and Grandpa were sharecroppers for awhile. I don't know for how long. Also, they lived in half of a house that was of architectural significance. It was one of the only Chinese Chippendale houses remaining in the state of South Carolina. Unfortunately, as I understand it, the house was destroyed before we left South Carolina. It was a beautiful house. They lived in half of it and another family lived in the other half.

Theirs was a very rough marriage in the early years, I am told. Grandpa was a drinker and domestic violence was an issue. I love this man dearly, but hate the things that I have heard he did to my grandma and their children. I think that ultimately he did love my grandma. I don't know what gets into the minds of some men. Near the end, not too long…maybe a year…before he died, he told me that he wished that he had never married Grandma. He didn't say it because he didn't love her. He said it because of all the hurt he had caused her through the years. I don't know how Grandma took it in her heart because when I first heard him say it, it hurt my heart for her. It hurt until I understood what he was actually saying, though in an awkward man way of saying things.

They have both been in Heaven now for 23 years (Grandma) and 24 years (Grandpa). I sure miss them. I never had to doubt the love of my grandparents, or my paternal grandparents, either. With so many things to doubt in my life, I never had to doubt that.

Happy 78th anniversary, Grandma and Grandpa Spence!

Saturday Stories: Anniversary of Amputation

The following is a departure from the usual type of story that I share here. Usually, I share stories from our more distant past or stories of our ancestors' lives. This is a post sharing what has been on my heart in the year since David's amputation on the eve of our wedding anniversary.

A year ago today, our lives changed. Sure, it was just a toe that they took from my husband's physical body, but more than that was taken. Any semblance of security left with his toe that night. It went out the door and a future filled with nurses and doctors and home health, hospital stays and uncertainty, and more and more of him being taken away from me was left in its stead.

"Come, grow old with me. The best is yet to be" paints an entirely different picture now that it isn't a life of the two of us traveling this journey anymore, but a multitude of others that have pushed their way into our lives and worked hard to push me out of it. With each closing door, each nurse's statement of "We'll take good care of him" and "Mrs. McClendon, you can't come in here. You need to wait out there," they are crowding in and I am being pushed out. Their words, supposedly meant for comfort, mean anything but comfort to me. I see a future that has us not growing old together, but being pulled apart and him being taken from me, piece by piece until there is nothing left of him or us.

David just recently spent another two weeks in the hospital. I don't have to wonder if there will be another hospital stay; for the rest of our lives, it will always be when, not if, until that day when the doors close and they no longer bring him back to me and I go home alone.

"What ifs" drive him crazy. He thinks that I shouldn't borrow tomorrow's troubles by worrying about them today. What he doesn't understand is that these are my troubles today. Tomorrow is here now and I don't like this tomorrow. I want the tomorrow that I envisioned all those years ago when he proposed, when he asked me to grow old with him, promising that the best was yet to be.

I want that picture of two old people holding hands on the front porch in the old wooden rocking chairs facing that sunset together, together until death parts us, not someone in a white suit and cap saying "I'm sorry, Mrs. McClendon, you have to leave now."

We don't always get what we want. Sometimes the picture is a locked door with two broken, barely beating hearts on either side, trying to catch their breath and hold on, grasping for each other, but being ripped apart instead.