I stumbled onto my old blog this morning, yes, this blog that I had such good intentions to keep up with. Recently, my life has seemingly ground to a halt and regaining my footing just isn’t happening. 2017 has been characterized by loss. I have lost things in 2017 that I’m not going to share, but I have lost someone in a way that I am going to share. A little over three months ago, I kept finding myself dry heaving in the bathroom. Thought I had the flu, friends of mine had the flu. After a few days of this flu that struck at odd times of the day I told my husband that I thought maybe, just maybe what I was feeling was the feeling of being pregnant. Less that an hour later we were quietly staring at a positive home test, unsure what to think or do. Our lives were pretty complicated three months ago. We were in the midst of over a year of being completely focused on something very different than being pregnant. We had to quickly reevaluate our entire life course and make a bunch a extraordinarily difficult and painful decisions. And then we embraced this baby, within a few days of realizing we had a son or daughter growing, we picked two names. Jovian Aldebaran for a boy, and Lyra Mae for a girl. Names picked from lists of stars and constellations, names we immediately found and agreed upon. We were 7 weeks along when we discovered our star. My pregnancy was difficult. I was alternating between bed rest and light duty as a result. At 15 weeks into the growth of our star, we were told it looked like something was wrong. It looked like our star had Trisomy 18… I’m quite certain that my heart actually stopped beating that day. We also found out that our tiny star is a boy. Jovian Aldebaran Piper. Tiny purple and white violets were blooming the day we got our genetic test results back. At just shy of 18 weeks we had a detailed ultrasound with specially trained doctors who confirmed that our star had a long list of problems consistent with a trisomy 18 diagnosis. They also could see that I had Placenta Abruptio, which explained some of the difficulties I was experiencing. It all happened so quickly, I keep replaying it in my mind and trying to sort things out. Four days after this appointment, at a cookout with friends and family, I started hemoraging. I got to the hospital at 8:45 on a Sunday night, and shortly before 6 am on Tuesday morning, after over 14 hours of labor, my husband delivered our tiny star into the world….. sleeping….. At a little over 10″ tall and almost 6 ounces, quietly he came and quietly he went. He had the most perfect and beautiful little nose and mouth that I have ever seen. He had tiny fingernails and tiny toenails, long arms and legs and my protruding wrist bones. At 18.5 weeks old, he recognizably had some of my features, he looked like his mama already.
-Nearly five years have passed since I wrote the above words-
For five springs I have cringed and shrank at the arrival of the Violets. I have tried not to notice them, but of course they jump out at me seemingly from everywhere. This year I am determined to make amends with the diminutive flower. As a novice photographer, I am learning about the connection between a negative and a positive. I am going to photograph my way through my aversion to this lovely flower. Its presence during a hard time transformed it into a harbinger of sorrow and loss. Through my cameras I am reframing this “negative” into a “positive”; from a black cloud to a hand of comfort, a sign of love, and a reminder of beauty amidst pain. When I see a violet peeking up at me, I will let myself feel the sorrow of a loss that I don’t want to go away. And I will treasure the reminder that people who are loved may be lost, but they will never be forgotten as long as we take time to remember them. Jovi is one of many dear and special people that I never want to forget. Thank you little purple and white flowers for remembering my boy each and every spring and not being afraid to remind me of his life.
earlgreyandi 