Stare it down

I'm starting - now 1 year out - to really face the bald-face truth: This happened to me. I lost this baby. She is gone.

The difference between now and a year ago is that I'm no longer fighting this truth. I used to say "I can't believe..." with a sense of injustice. I screamed this in the shower. I literally would find myself involuntarily shaking my head "no."

Now - with time, with counseling, with all sorts of coping mechanisms - there are days when I can leave it at just this: "This happened to me" with some level of belief about the whole thing.

I also realize that I can only imagine who she would be - I can't in good conscience think that I know who she really was or would have been. She is who she is -and a mystery to me in so many ways.

The comfort?

It comes right now in really being able to see how she is woven into our lives. I water the plant my family gave us in her honor. I see her picture. I have my necklace. Every time the wind picks up outside my house, every fall, will be about her. We'll keep baking our cakes. We'll keep lighting our candle. We have the pillow my grandmother made. We will soon have the angel ornaments on the Christmas tree.

This is not how I wanted it to be. This is the way it is. I hold both of these side by side.

Bake a cake

Today we baked a cake. For Grace.

It has the brightest, cheeriest angels, flowers and stars on it.

Baking is not in my comfort zone. But neither is mourning 1 year without Grace.

Because baking is not in my comfort zone, the kitchen was a disaster area. I ran all over the place collecting ingredients. I found a recipe from scratch, with seasonal ingredients. A crimson chocolate cake -- crimson for Grace's lips, chocolate for Grace's unlikely dark hair. (Did I tell you that Grace had red lips? Ah, that's another post.) Rather than use red dye, the crimson comes from beets. Shredded beets. Seems as probable as anything else I've experienced this year.

So I'm shredding by hand, deep in the purple muck, hands in gloves to avoid the beet purple stains. (It tasted fabulous, actually - for more on the cake itself, go here)

N and I went shopping for the decorations. We are going crazy with sprinkles (pastel hearts - what else would a 3-year-old girl want?) and bright fondant (purple, yellow, neon pink, I'm alarmed to discover as I open the package).

In the store, N asks: When is Grace's birthday?
It would be today, I answer. Today she would be with us 1 year.

At home, we cut out the fondant. Purple pink orange angels, yellow pink purple hearts, orange purple flowers. And plop a candle on.

A, N, and I light 1 green candle for Grace, surrounded by flowers, angels, trinkets from our loved ones and from people we barely know.

I ask N if we should sing a song - a birthday song? Another song we like?

She responds, I will say it and then you say it. Her chant is:
- Happy anniversary Grace! I hope you like the cake! I hope you get some cake!

Then she blows out the candle and announces:
- I'm blowing it out for Grace. Because she can't. Because she's not here. And because she's died.

That's our 1 year mark. Happy anniversary, Grace. I hope you like the cake.