I can still feel her. I can feel her hands on mine late into the night and I can feel her breathe in every windstorm. I can feel her power and her laughter linger in my dreams, never allowing me to forget a single thing she has ever said or done.
It came as quite a shock to me. I knew that something was up the second the doctor ushered me and her parents from the hospital room while several nurses rushed past. My attention could hold nothing but the hurried hands flying as shadows in the covered window and the quick orders of the doctor. I had to press my ear to the door to hear the whispered and worried voices of the staff.
I heard beeps and tones and codes that I didn't understand, and a nurse began to direct me away from the door. Even though it would make no difference, my proximity to the room, I began to fear losing it. I wanted to stand by the door, to be as close to her as possible, to reassure myself that everything would be normal and I would be allowed back in in just a few moments.
Oh, how so I wanted to pretend.
I ended up having to have a group of nurses restrain me and drag me, kicking and screaming, to the waiting room. This was my first clue that something was seriously wrong. My second clue came only minutes later, and it was a group of men in scrubs with clipboards and tired eyes walking towards me.
They asked if I was my wife's husband. I said yes, and they told me that we had some bad news. I froze, knowing exactly what that meant in a hospital setting.
"I'm sorry, it was very difficult, and she gave a worthy fight. I'm sorry, we've lost her," They had said. 606Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZofesG2Kq9
I croaked, slumping down back into my chair, panting for breathe.
"The....the baby? She's a she? She's gone?"
They shook their head sorrowfully, and I could feel nothing but a rush of panic settling itself into my ribcage, teetering on a total public breakdown. I didn't want to hear what they said next. I shook my head, I didn't want to hear it. Even though I already knew it, I didn't want to hear it. Because to know and to hear for sure are two different things.
"I'm sorry, no. We've got your baby girl in infant care at the moment. Your wife passed away due to birth complications. We did everything we could, but she passed away."
In that moment I could say nothing. To be completely honest, I wished that I had died as well. My thought process shattered and my world came raining down on me, and no matter how frantically I tried to save the pieces they still broke. Everything was so out of my control and I couldn't take it.
...
It's been seven years, and I know she would have looked so much differently now, but when I imagine her the only picture I get is the 23 year old woman I love, lain in a casket. Her funeral was hard, and then it all got the tiniest bit easier, but it has never stopped hurting.
I see her when I ride the subway, when I watch fireworks. I see her when I spill my coffee on the floor and have to use her favorite towels. I taste her in the recipes she taught me and in the toothpaste she adamantly had me buy. I can hear her in my daughter's laugh and I can feel her ringing with the dull thud of the church bells, the funeral tolls, that haunt me every Sunday morning. The reverberations of potholes in the cement roads take me back to our roadtrips.
I don't know if the memories make it feel any less or more okay. I don't know what they're worth or what they mean, but they never leave. I don't know if my dreams of her are truly dreams or if they are nightmares. Sometimes I can feel myself dreaming, and I refuse to let it go because in my dreams, I can still see her. It's a hazy picture, a not-all-the-way-there noise, but I can see her. Feel her. Hear her. I never want to stop sleeping.606Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpyBDQ5qcmb
What keeps me going is my baby girl, with her name, who holds the oceans in her eyes and the wind inside of her lungs. My daughter laughs and plays and learns and feels, and I cannot give up on her. She is so alike her mother, but at the same time, so starkly different. I try very hard to raise her as her own person, and not as a spitting image of her mother, because as much as I miss her, I want my daughter to be herself. It's what she would have wanted.
I think what is most hard for me to deal with, though, is the fact that my daughter will never get to meet the amazing woman that she hears about in her bedtime stories.
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