Sunday, October 23, 2016

Capture your grief, day 23

23. SOUNDS, SEASONS + SCENTS | There are reminders of our children everywhere. We find them in songs, in scents and different seasons. Share the things that bring you closer to your children. Feel free to share a song that reminds you of them.


Butterflies of course make me think of Kayla.  Summer....July.  Despite being born in March, July reminds me of her because for 5 months, I was looking forward to July, when we would bring her home.  I envisioned walking around sweating and feeling like a whale in my last month of pregnancy, and summer birthday parties.  I pictured her being so excited for her birthday because it also meant she would be on summer break.  July represented the happy month she was supposed to come, whereas March represents the sad month she did come.  I remember thinking when we were trying again after our loss, the thought of a different due date, and a different time of year made me sad.  Because I didn't want a fall baby or a winter baby or a spring baby.  I wanted a summer baby, I wanted that baby.

Her name....I hear her name every where.  I never thought of Kayla as a super popular name.  It's not really a classic name, nor a trendy name...it kind of just falls somewhere in the middle.  I know how it goes, you never hear of something until you focus on it, then you hear it everywhere.  I had a teacher in high school that said he thought of Elvis one day, and then every day after for months, he would hear something about Elvis almost every day.  He never heard it before, because he wasn't paying attention to it.

Since we lost Kayla, I've heard the name a lot.  There is another Kayla near her grave at the cemetery.  She's a couple clients at work, she's waiting on us at a restaurant, she's a friend of a friend who just posted something on facebook.  It makes sense, the whole theory that these things have always been around, you just notice them now because you're paying attention.  But we had been paying attention to the name long before she was born, long before she was even conceived.  Six years prior on my second date with my husband, he told me that he loved the name Kayla, and that if he ever has a little girl he wanted to name her that.

It didn't take long before we started talking about a future, about marriage, about kids.  We often talked about baby Kayla whenever we would talk about our future children.  He never ever talked about a future son, just a daughter, and we always called her Kayla when discussing children.  If I wasn't feeling well, he would ask in a cute way, "is it Kayla"?  So when the ultrasound tech said "this is a girl baby", I immediately turned my head to look at my husband, smiled and said "it's a Kayla"!  So it strikes me as odd that we hear the name often since she was born, despite the fact that we had been paying attention to the name for six years prior to that.  I rarely, if ever heard the name before she was born.  It's like each time I hear it now, it's her, saying I'm here mama.  I'm still here.

No comments:

Post a Comment