A Walk with Baby Marc

I should have an almost two year old. As I walked today I pictured an almost two year old Marc walking beside me. He held my hand as I imagined walking through my life without my grief. It's so hard to picture what that life looks like. What does it look like to just be a mom with her babies?
I can't help but wonder, what does it feel like to have children but have never lost one? Since Marcus was my first I will never know. There are so many things that are lost and to grieve for when you lose a child and that was heavy on my heart today. While I grieved for a certain experience of motherhood that I can never know I also looked down at my little two year old image of Marc. I imagined his smile, his laugh, those eyes that I never got to see...and I had to thank him. I've said it a million times but he really has made me a better woman.
But it has been almost two years without my precious baby. I miss him every single day and as his birthday approaches it is getting harder and harder to not feel sorry for myself, for what I should have and for what I am burdened to carry.
I am sad that I will never know what it is like to be normal mom, I in turn know that if you have not lost a child you can't possibly know or understand the way it changes you. It breaks apart every thought or idea you ever had and forces you to put all the pieces back together again. Some pieces are transformed into totally new shapes or haphazardly glued back together. Some are lost forever but sometimes it's possible to find extra pieces. Ones you would never have discovered without the loss.
I know a depth of love that is only possible if you have lost a child. I'm sure no mother is envious of that knowledge but at least it's something I can take a little comfort in.

Those times that I start to feel sorry for myself for having to walk with this grief I just try to remember that while Marc's death has forced me to rearrange and reconfigure the broken pieces of my heart it has also expanded its capacity to feel, to love, to imagine. His short life fills me with motivation and inspiration to live the best life I can.

I walk with grief everyday. Sometimes she is following at a distance and sometimes she is standing right next to me walking in step. Today I took some time to walk with Marc instead. To hold his memory in my heart and let grief walk alone. As I breathed in the fresh air I held my babies hand and just loved him.