mommy guilt

i still cannot make it through the entire video tribute to madeline alice spohr. the pictures i can handle. combined with video of her and music, no. maddie. a name so very close to our #2 choice, so close in age to our actual abigail olivia holt.

for all my family has endured, the loss of a child is something i cannot imagine. and yet i seem surrounded by folks - in the blogosphere and my own widening circle - who have. who are.

our reality is a physical one. no matter how faithful we are in the spiritual. i only recognize my children by their look and feel and sound. there was a sense about mom that was lost in her accident. and how did we know? we saw it in her altered look and felt it in her altered touch. altered or no. i cannot imagine the feel of my children's bodies, the sight of their faces put to dust.

and yet woefully ignored were they today.

i suppose that is my prayer of thankfulness. that i have been afforded another day to be one of those moms. who took a full minute to realize maddy was saying "i'm stuck" not "look/duck/truck/sock", as i was trying to get her to move along so i could pick up mr. neglected too. she couldn't be on her way as her pant leg was caught on the the edge of my wheelchair.

such extreme grief i cannot fathom. it makes all of whatever i write about here to the children pale in significance. i want that on the record. at all times, even when i'm being a petty dope or mean mom, i remember how lucky we are.

lucky we are and yet still incredibly sad for families like maddie's. hugging the child God lent you to raise does not erase the pain you feel for parents unable to hug theirs.