For the Other Mothers

As Mother's Day approaches, I'm obviously very excited to be celebrating the first of many of such holidays with my family.  But I'm also having a hard time forgetting our last two Mother's Days.

Two years ago, I had just experienced the first of our four pregnancy losses.  I was devastated and heartbroken, and the sight of happy mothers with their babies or even a passing mention of Mother's Day made me angry.

Last year, I was still recovering from my fourth loss.  Because of my medical history, my doctors decided to perform a D&C so they could attempt to determine why we were losing our babies.  As I lay in the operating room after the procedure, I felt our daughter wake me up.  I saw the surprised faces of the surgeon and nurses as I asked to see what they had taken out of me.  They held it up, we said good-bye, and I drifted back to sleep.  The next thing I remember was waking up in my hospital room with Matt next to me.

This year, those first two Mother's Days are in the back of my mind.  This year, I'm thinking of how hard this day will be for all the other women who want so badly to be mothers for the first time--or the sixth time--but  just aren't yet.  I'm thinking of all those who said good-bye to a mother this year, or, even worse, those who said good-bye to a child.

And for my dear friends and family who are enduring such losses this year, I share with you a poem that a dear friend shared with me last Mother's Day.  I hope it brings you some of the same peace and hope it brought me.

From "Calmly We Walk Through This April's Day" by Delmore Schwartz

Each minute bursts in the burning room,   

The great globe reels in the solar fire,   

Spinning the trivial and unique away.

(How all things flash! How all things flare!)   

What am I now that I was then?   

May memory restore again and again   

The smallest color of the smallest day:   

Time is the school in which we learn,   

Time is the fire in which we burn.