Vanessa
What a difficult week. I hope Chris is doing better now. Youre words are soo
true and hard to read..... you say all the things i have wished for such a long
time i would be able to write.... for the first time since Mercy passed and i
wrote words for her funeral i was able to write this week.

I treasure the time we spend together soo much.....Though it can be draining i
never want it to end, Having someone else to share my babies life with over and
over again...I hold you near and dear to my heart.

you are not alone as i expressed the other week... I too felt such sadness
whilst carrying Nathaniel and seem to experience an even deeper grief now that i
watch him grow without one of hus bog sisters to encourage him along.

There are many a ay oi wish you were closer just so i could give you a hug
without any words spoken.

Im posting photos on facebook today of Mercy that i have never posted before.

This is what i wrote this week:

I hold you in my arms today
Finally you are here
I held you in my heart today
I knew for only a little while you would be near

Its been such a long journey
just to hold you today
But i treasure every moment
And pray for a little longer you'll stay

I wait upon your every breath
With hope and love and fear
You are my angel baby
For you i'll shed many a tear

To God you'll go and soon
And i'll remember while you there,
One day soon ill see you again
But you were always Gods to share.

Pettina xoxo


--- In as_ap@..., "Vanessa Murphy" <chrisandvanessamurphy@...>
wrote:
>
> It's been a crazy week. Chris ended up in hospital for half of it, and had
surgery, all unplanned. He had his appendix out, which doesn't sound terrible,
but spending 8 hours in the emergency department watching your husband in
extreme pain, then going back and forth to the hospital over the next 2 days to
be of support really took it out of me. On Wednesday he was discharged. It was
the 15th of July, 10 months since our son Matthew died in that same hospital. I
could see Matthew's room every time I walked down the hallway to Chris' surgical
ward. And every time I stopped and looked down at it and remembered our days
there. So on Wednesday I walked into the hospital where my son died, to pick up
my husband after his surgery.
>
> I feel drained. Yesterday I went to Matthew's grave, as I had been wanting to
all week, and had a big cry. I could see all the people there by the hole in the
ground, just as things had been on his burial day. I could see Shane with his
arm around a very pregnant Helen, I could see Ruth and Bonnie standing next to
Bonnie's son's grave. I could see various relatives of ours crying on and off
and wondered why was I not crying that day. I want to go back there and cry, and
cry out "don't take my boy away, don't put him in the ground, NO!" But I can't
go back, and even if I could it wouldn't change anything. I must have been in a
lot of shock back then, because it's only now that I feel the full force of my
grief. Why didn't I feel it then when it was all happening to me? I went back
later in the afternoon with the 10 flowers I wanted to put there on Wednesday.
10 flowers for 10 months without Matthew.
>
> My Mum told me yesterday that she thinks I've had enough babies. I'm sure that
comments like that are only meant to be helpful, but they don't seem that way to
me at the time. Does she not realise that not having more babies, while it may
save me from some of the physical hurts of pregnancy which I am now
experiencing, will not save me from the lifetime of hurt I will feel over losing
Matthew? What is she trying to save me from by saying that? She can't save me
from the sadness I feel for Matthew. I don't think she's even registered that
the hard part about this pregnancy is not related to how many babies I've had,
but how close together these last 2 have been. That contributes to the physical
difficulties anyway. I don't think she's registered that the last 3-4 months
have been the hardest months of my life emotionally. She doesn't ask me about
those things, doesn't try to understand. No-one else speaks of it either. I got
through the first few weeks so well, why would things be bad now? Because it's
only now that I fully feel what happened, that I can cry and cry and cry over
the baby I never brought home.
>
> I don't know how I'm going to hold my new baby girl, D3. I can't picture being
able to do it without tears flowing and my whole body shaking with the
surreal-ness of it all. It makes me think of the last time I held Matthew, and
how little I held him after his birth. I'm facing meeting two new baby boys this
week and wondering how I could hold them either, but desperately wanting to all
the same. In some ways I want to be confronted with a baby boy who is the same
size my Matthew was. I want to remember what it was like to hold a new baby his
size. Cathy's baby Calvin was born yesterday afternoon. I shed tears of joy for
Cathy, that her very long pregnancy was over and ended well, and tears of
sadness that my Matthew is not here to be a friend to Calvin. Tomorrow baby
Nicole will be here, now 10 months old as Matthew would have been. I haven't
seen her for over 2 months, so she will have jumped ahead in her development
again in that time. And the day after that, our new nephew will be born in
Wollongong. A new grandson for my mother in law, whose last grandson died only
10 months ago. How different this visit to our nephew will be from Teresa's
visit to her nephew 10 months ago. It seems really tragic and wrong that I could
participate in the celebration of these little lives, when I asked these same
friends to visit my dead baby so recently. That day must have been more weird
for them than us, I'm sure. So much so, that one aunty didn't even come to meet
her dead nephew. I find that very difficult to get over, that for whatever
reasons I obviously don't understand, she didn't take a once in a lifetime
opportunity to meet a new member of her family.
>
> I miss Matthew so much. I miss his ferocious kicks inside me, his one hour of
life that went so quickly, the little noises he made during that time, the way
he seemed to touch other people's lives, the times we had as a family of 4 with
him. I feel overwhelmed with the grief, overwhelmed with life, and overwhelmed
at the future. I've been listening to Casting Crowns a lot again lately: "The
God of all creation holds our lives in His hands, He cares for them just as He
cares for you...Just love them like Jesus". Praise God that He does hold our
lives in his hands, that he holds our tears, our hurts, and our worries too. It
doesn't lift me out of my sadness to know this, but it gives me a glimmer of
hope that I will lift out of sadness again one day, that ultimately the sadness
will be taken away, even if I have to wait a lifetime for that day.
>