This week in grief

It's been almost six weeks now and most of the time I am holding up fine. I think about my son all the time, but it's an undercurrent as I go about my day. I no longer can quite keep track of how many weeks pregnant I would be. But there are always moments, things I see or hear or read that tip me unexpectedly into a puddle of sorrow and regret.

Most recently it was the song "For Good" from Wicked. Looking at the lyrics now, they strike me as trite, but they hit a nerve nonetheless. Because I do wonder, often, what Lesson I am supposed to have learned from this experience. Is it presumptuous, or just premature, to think that I should take something away, that I deserve to get something out of it? That I ought to be wise enough to figure out what that something is? Is that too much pressure for my baby's tiny shoulders, or my own?

I've heard it said
That people come into our lives for a reason
Bringing something we must learn
And we are led
To those who help us most to grow
If we let them
And we help them in return

Well, I don't know if I believe that's true
But I know I'm who I am today
Because I knew you

Like a comet pulled from orbit
As it passes a sun

Like a stream that meets a boulder
Halfway through the wood

Who can say if I've been changed for the better?
But because I knew you
I have been changed for good

It well may be
That we will never meet again
In this lifetime
So let me say before we part
So much of me
Is made of what I learned from you

You'll be with me
Like a handprint on my heart
And now whatever way our stories end
I know you have re-written mine
By being my friend

I may not know exactly how far along I should be now, but I do picture, often, what would be happening now if our boy had lived, what I'd be doing and feeling. I expect I always will. I see three paths, three versions of my life--the one where I have a healthy, typical pregnancy and baby; the one where I have a child with disabilities, and am suddenly thrust into a new world of medical and educational and emotional challenges; and the one where I am missing a child. It's all very Sliding Doors.

Like a ship blown from its mooring
By a wind off the sea
Like a seed dropped by a skybird
In a distant wood

Who can say if I've been changed for the better?
But because I knew you
I have been changed for good
--lyrics by Stephen Schwartz

Changed for good? That much is clear, even if not much else is.