Please let this be rock bottom

Today marks two weeks since my life may as well have ended. That’s when I found out she was gone. And still not a minute goes by that I don’t think of her. Not a minute goes by that it doesn’t hurt. Some minutes the pain is more intense than others. Some minutes, it is so bad that it literally takes my breath away. I can hardly even breathe, much less cry. In the darkest times, the very darkest, I wonder why on Earth God would take her from me, and leave me here without her. I wonder why he couldn’t have just taken me too. And the only reason I can come up with is that I am being punished. That it was, in whatever way, my fault that she died. Somehow, I killed my precious little Finlay, and my punishment is having to endure what is left of my life here without her.


I try to remember what I once loved about living. And when I can come up
with anything at all, that same thing now brings me pain. Because, now, that thing is without her. Before, on my darkest day, just being in the presence of my niece and nephews for a few minutes could lift my spirits remarkably. Now Haylee’s sweetness and innate girly-ness, Brayden’s good-natured goofiness, and even Nathan’s smile and occasional cuddles are also a glaring reminder of all that I’m missing out on with my own sweet girl, of all that she will never now have the chance to be. Even the music I loved, that always brought me such joy, is now the music that I will never get to introduce to my Finlay. I will never get to see what she would have looked like. What color would her eyes have been? Her hair? Would it have been fine and straight like mine, Melissa’s and Haylee’s? Or would it have been thick and curly through some fluke of nature? Would she have had my long legs? She definitely had my nose. And her hands looked a lot like mine. Would she, too, have had long fingers and loved to play the piano? Would she have shared my love of words and books? Would she have been shy and sensitive like me and her Aunt Melissa and cousin Haylee? Would she have been super girly like Doodle, or a tomboy like my sister, or would she have been a nerdy little bookworm like her Momma? Would she have had her Grandpa’s sense of humor? I will never get to answer these questions. I will never get to hear the sound of her cry, to comfort her, to change her diaper. I won’t get to cheer her on when she learns to roll over or takes her first steps. I won’t ever rock her to sleep and just watch her while she dreams.

In glancing over the last paragraph, I am struck by the fact that I have used the words, “won’t GET to” pretty much exclusively. As opposed to “won’t HAVE to” do the same. And that’s exactly how it feels. All of the things I once would have considered odious necessities now seem very much like privileges, opportunities that I will be sorely missing out on. The sense of loss is truly incredible. Things that were once so strange and foreign to me, like breast-feeding and cleaning up spit-up now seem like fundamental needs more akin to breathing than the inconvenient unpleasantries they once were. I want so badly now to be a mother and to do all the things that role entails. I want to have a baby so badly. But I don’t want just any baby, and I don’t want to be just anyone’s mother. I want her. I want my Finlay. And I wonder if I can ever love another baby, can ever love ANYone, really, as much as I love her even now.

It helps to think of her in heaven, healthy and happy and beautiful, and in my Grandma’s arms. But believing she is there also makes me ache to join her. Now. I don’t want to wait. Don’t want to continue to suffer through all of the pain and loss and disappointment that is now my life here on Earth. Nothing and no one can ever take her place in my heart, so how can this hurt ever end? What do I need to be here for? There is no point in my existence any more. What am I working for? Why should I stick around when I have no one to live for? And why try to have another baby when I have my perfect Finlay waiting for me already? I was always so afraid of dying. And now it feels like that may be the only way to ever really live again. Dying is the only way to get back to my angel. So it seems like death could be the greatest gift of all.

People tell me that people who take their own lives don’t get to go to heaven. But that doesn’t make sense to me at all. What about people who have lost all hope and just wish for God to deliver them from their pain? What about people with cancer who just can’t want to fight anymore, and refuse any further treatment? What about people who accidentally die because they took too much medicine, took the wrong combination of medicines, or even drank too much? They died as a direct result of their own actions. Does that keep them out of heaven, too? Or what about people who are just reckless? Adrenaline junkies who take stupid, extreme risks? Like climbing mountains or jumping out of airplanes or the YouTube morons who routinely risk their lives all for the sake of internet stardom? What about the guy who jumps on a grenade, knowing that he will lose his life, but that in doing so he will save another? How is any of that really so different than my ending my life to spare the ones I love from the burden of supporting me, emotionally, financially, and even physically? How is my situation all that different from the person who is ill and forgoes treatment in order to avoid more pain, and to keep from being a burden to the family members who must care for them? Or from the person who refuses life support or heroic measures to resuscitate them? And what about people with eating disorders who die because they literally starve themselves to death? I find it difficult to believe that all of these people will be relegated to Hell. And how is my suffering somehow less valid? People like to say that God never gives you more than you can handle. But that’s not entirely true is it? If it were, then nobody would ever be so depressed or so hopeless or in so much physical pain that they decide to “check out early”, as a friend recently put it, would they? And what about all the bad stuff that people say God didn’t actually give you in the first place? Lots of people say that bad things that happen aren’t of God. That he doesn’t “give” you cancer. That he didn’t “take” my baby from me. I remember being told that He didn’t cause that man to rape me so many years ago. It just doesn’t seem fair to me that God would allow this to happen to me, and then to punish me for not having the strength to bear it. And I’m just not sure that I do. Not sure at all. But I’m trying. I’m trying so hard, and it seems like that should count for something.