The Incarnation of Grief

Today would have been my daughter's birthday.

She died on December 2, 2004.

Too soon. Too young. Her life just really beginning to come into full bloom, cut short by an early frost.

This is strange, hard, tedious work, this business of grieving. I have found, in the three years I've been doing it, that it's not the anniversary of her death that is the difficult day to get through.

It is her birthday.

Perhaps that is because I've found that it is my body that misses her most on this day.

I tried all day to keep myself busy - my mind active - so I wouldn't have time to "think" too much about her. That worked fairly well, but my body would not let me forget the significance of the day.

My body missed her in that place in every woman's body where she first knows she's pregnant. Knows before the lab test. Before the trip to the doctor. Before the phone call. The days before post modern at-home-pregnancy tests rendered all of that a quaint old fashioned ritual of the modern heralding of new life.

In the moment it happened, my mind was not engaged in any particular thought, but out of nowhere, my body remembered the sensation like an old, long-lost friend.

I felt it again as if for the first time today and I embraced it fully. My heart remembered, too, and it leapt for joy just as it did when I first knew I was pregnant with her. Knew she was to be a girl-child. Knew her to be perfect and beautiful and amazing - even before she was.

And then I remembered where I was and where she was not and a sadness washed over me even as I offered a silent prayer for the gift of her life, and the absolute, unadulterated nine months of the joy of having had her tiny form molded and shaped within me.

My body missed her in the places a woman feels the first wave of the hard work of labor begin in her body - a tight twinge in the tippidy top of my now long barren uterus, and a deep ache in the place where the deepest part of the groin meets the lowest part of the tailbone.

And then my heart twinged and ached in the same way, and a wave of a few blessed tears washed over me which helped to soften the hard lump of grief that had settled itself in the back of my throat.

My arms missed holding her. Cradling her. Cuddling her. My fingers missed tickling her toddler belly. That spot under her infant double chin.

My breasts missed feeding her, missed being filled to discomfort with that which provided her both nourishment and solace.

My ears missed the sound of her laughter. All day, I kept thinking I had heard it just round the corner. There! Is Jaime here? Where? Oh, no. Of course not. Sorry.

I'm sorry she wasn't here today to enjoy the beautiful autumn day. She loved to walk. God, I think she walked every inch of every street in Boston - but especially in the South End where she lived. She loved to walk when most other people don't.

In the rain. In the cold. After midnight.

Today would have been my daughter's birthday. So, I did what every mother does on the anniversary of her child's birth. I lit a candle and sang "Happy Birthday to you." Softly. All by myself. Just the two pups, CoCo and Lenny, listening with sweet attentiveness, the way they do when they know something Very Important is happening.

I sang it as memory. I sang it as hymn. I sang it as lullaby. I sang it as hope.

Happy birthday to you, Jaime.

I miss you.

You will always be with me until we are together again.