Pain Pain Go Away...

...Come again another day.


April has a way of cleansing the earth and the spirit. With every rain drop, a speck of something tainted in dirt or dreariness from winter's path is washed away. With the nurturing ways Spring's showers have to offer, the spirit of the new season blossoms and shows itself through beautiful colors, scents and song. Life is like that too.


On Wednesday, I would have celebrated a child's 10th birthday. Like many women, I lost a precious miracle and have had to say goodbye to a piece of me I'd never know, but always remember.


I have not given much thought over the last handful of years about my loss. With any pain, it does eventually subside or at least it hides in a corner placing little emphasis on itself defering attention to something greater or worse as it comes. I am grateful for this. It has many a day protected my spirit and mood from danger and has averted what could have been catastrophe.


For the last four years in particular, I was exceptionally focused on trying to live up to being the Mommy of twin boys and a four year-old at the time, that I thought I should be. I had little down time to reflect, retreat or remember. Certainly the date was always in the forefront of my existence come April, but it would come and go with a quiet and still I could gently and ever-so-genuinely appreciate and move on from.


The other day was different. While cleaning out an abandoned closet in the spirit of spring cleaning, I was suddenly and harshly interrupted by a fall of a bag from the top shelf. Frustrated at the additonal mess it had made, I soon went to clean it up. It was then I realized upon seeing some written greeting cards and a hospital release form that I was staring my past in the face. I dropped to me knees.


What darkness to evoke the soul and take her back to shattering times of heartache and sadness!


I am uncertain what urged me to pull out the contents from the bag and continue the plunge into a past pain,but I did. It was at that moment the date of April 25th snapped a synapse in my brain causing me to unleash years of built-up and hushed grief.... tears. TEARS.


Like those annoying bystanders and accident stalkers I begrudge on the highway who have to slow down to be part of the scene of the drama unfolding on their route, I too, had to rush to lock the door and have my drama. My cleansing. Why this particular day, this particular year, this particular moment? I'll never know, or at least I can't quite decipher today, but perhaps in time, I might be able to see it as some sort of sign or whisper from above. (I often do take those subtle hints from God as such signs).


Regardless, I had my April showers. I read through the emails and heart-felt cards sent to me during that sad and dark time. I touched my hospital admittance bracelet between my fingers with a longing for something gone. I dug and crawled and let go to the tunnel of despair I remember trudging through so many years ago as if the loss had happened just this year. I let myself just be. I texted my sister for reassurance and validation that I wasn't alone in needing to recall something so raw. I let myself go...back to feeling sorry for this incredible miracle gone....back to mourning a face I would never exchange soul glances with....back to that Labor day (yes, it's ironic and sick, isn't it.) I had my cleansing.


A few days later, I'm here wondering what great message God has for me. I have many theories; the start to cleansing my spirit as I enter into my forties is the first. Perhaps He is reminding me that like any garden or newly planted seed or the aged and vast fields and meadowlands, it takes the trickle of gentle showers and gushing rainstorms, sunshine, time and nature's blanket of love for growth to occur.