It's been three weeks since Andrew and Benjamin were born. Three weeks full of heartache and regret and useless what ifs on top of three weeks of overwhelming love and compassion and patience on the part of those around us that, combined, have left my emotional filter threadbare. A loss like this feels like it overshadows everything else, and moving forward is so much easier said than done.
But I don't know how. Because any step away from this is a step away from my boys. And however unavoidable it is, that first step feels impossible.
And amid all of this, I am left with one overwhelming regret about the only thing I really could have done differently in all of this: we didn't have a funeral. And I worry this makes them less legitimate to everyone but me. I worry that because noone else saw them, held them, noticed the side-bent pinkies that their older brother and sister also inherited from their daddy and the scrunchy toes on skinny feet they got from me, that in everyone else's mind, Andrew and Benjamin were never really here — never really a part of our family. And this breaks my heart all over again because, to us, they were everything.
Shortly after we told the kids we were having twins, Nora started pushing two of her dollies around in her little stroller. She called them her "twin babies," and her playtime with them almost always led to conversations about what her "twin brothers" (she got really mad if you just called them the babies or brothers without the "twin") would be like. To this day, her twin babies are swaddled, rock-a-byed and tucked in beside her before she goes to sleep, and she often talks about "when our twin babies come back".
And though he understands that our twin babies will not come back (and gently reminds his little sister every time she brings them up), Porter carries his little brothers with him in other ways and often asks about how old they will be "when we are all together in Heaven." Every once in a while, he sneaks into my room and gently holds the hand molds of his brothers that a kind nurse made for us the night they were born, rubbing his thumb across their fingers and marveling at how tiny his brothers were.
I wonder if he picked this up from me. Though I want to do something lasting with the hand molds (just have't figured out what that should be), I can't bring myself to stow them away for the time being, so they sit on top of my jewelry box where I can get to them anytime I need a reminder that all of this did happen. That they were really my babies. Much like the ultrasound photo that still hangs on our fridge; though we see it every day, neither Andy nor I have the heart to take it down.
I don't know what to do with all these reminders. When you think about grief, noone ever tells you about all its baggage.
Noone tells you that when you do muster the courage to return to work, you will open your desk drawer to find the leftover anti-nausea medicine you kept on hand just in case the morning sickness returned. Or that your husband would run into an uninformed acquaintance who would innocently inquire about how the twin pregnancy was going.
It doesn't end and so it is hard to move on.
It's November now. I am supposed to be nearing the end. We weren't going to go anywhere for Thanksgiving, "just in case they came early." The thing about all of this, is that it caught us completely off guard. I had an ultrasound just five days before, and everything was fine — we were basking in high hopes. And then we weren't. And each week feels like another sucker punch.
Just three days before we lost Andrew and Benjamin, my mom and I finished piecing the tops of two quilts for their nursery.
Three weeks later, the second crib, nine bulk boxes of diapers and all the coordinating sleepers and onesies have been returned, but my boys are no less present to me.
They are with me every moment. And I don't know if I'm ready to give that up.
So the hand-written list of baby names with some crossed off and some starred is tucked in a clip on the side of the fridge. Though I will probably never use it, the brand new double stroller hides in the back of our storage closet, "just in case we have twins again." And though I have blocked the weekly "Your Growing Baby" emails that told me which fruit or vegetable my boys were as long as each week, I can't stop googling "identical twin pregnancy complications" in the hope that I will make sense of all that has happened.
But it just doesn't make sense. I can't wrap my head around everything that has changed in just three short weeks. So however unavoidable it is, this first step feels impossible.
Just three weeks and three days ago, I had three hearts beating inside of me. Now I've just got a shattered one and a whole lot of unanswered questions. But what I do know is this: These boys mattered. They matter. They were my children and they will be again. And I cling to that — one last hope from the countless dreams I imagined just three weeks and three days ago.
