What should be. What WILL be.

What should be:

A day spent admiring my three beautiful children.

A reflection on the joys of the last three years of motherhood.

A giggling little girl playing with her baby brother and sister, showing off her ever expanding vocabulary and doing "big girl things".

What WILL be:

A day spent admiring my three beautiful children.

Two in my arms, one only in my memory.

A reflection of the long road that motherhood has taken me on.

A road filled with tears of joy and sorrow. 

With obstacles overcome, and those that never can be.

An ache for my giggling little girl who never lived to learn to giggle.

The pain of her absence ever present,

regardless of the other joys in my life.

This is the best I can hope for.

For this Mother's Day, 

or any others to follow.

For the first time since becoming a mother, I am not dreading Mother's Day. I am looking forward to celebrating these three amazing little beings, and all the ways that they have changed me, but as with all milestone dates, the countdown to Mother's Day brings with it a mix of emotions.

The joy over all I have,

and the pain over all I can't.

As Sunday approaches, Peyton feels that much further from me.

Not from my soul of course. 

But physically. Just so very far. 

I want to hold her again. I want to feel her nuzzle against my chest. I want to breathe in the sweet minty smell of the hair on her head.

Each day I tell her brother and sister about the amazing things that she did. How strong she was. The way she would stare into our eyes for hours and rarely complained despite the trials she was put through. I tell them how at just a few minutes old, Peyton reached out and grabbed her pacifier, sticking it into her own mouth -  a feat that at nine weeks old, neither of her siblings have yet managed to figure out.

I tell them these things because it is all I can do.
It is the only way they will ever know her.
Through me.
Through my telling.

What should be will always haunt me.
She was here.
She was perfect.
She was mine and she is gone.

Still gone.

Despite two and a half years of prayers to the contrary.

My daughter Peyton is gone and the permanence of that is something I will struggle through all the days of my life.

What will be is beautiful,
but what should have been can never be forgotten.

***
Whether TTC, giving up on conceiving at all, waiting for a rainbow, carrying your rainbow, holding your rainbow in your arms, facing your first Mother's Day without the child you have lost, facing the tenth Mother's Day without the child you have lost, facing countless Mother's Days without ever having a child - regardless of where you are in your given journey, I know that Mother's Day can be the cruelest day on the calendar.

Please know I am keeping you all in my heart this Sunday.