Yesterday was awful. I cried for 10 hours pretty much solid. Neither hugs nor drugs did the slightest bit to calm me. It was supposed to be the day I came off best rest and "safe" to go into labour. Today I feel seriously hung over (No I have not drunk a thing)- am a f!@#$ niddah again so am probably anemic (from the TMI files this is the worst bleeding I have ever had- if it stays this bad too much longer I will make a doctor's appointment).

I am probably dehydrated (having nothing but a cup of water since yesterday at lunch) but did manage to force down 1/2 a cup of life cereal with a drop of milk this morning. I am currently so pale I make casper look like cosby and my eyes feel like someone attacked them with sandpaper.

I feel like i have not slept in a month.

I feel like I am walking on a thread of a spider web.  All around me is grief and despair, and the single strand is the only thing holding me in check.  The single thread is Channah- but push her too far, or lose my balance, and I fall of into the black void below.  Worse yet would be to wake the huge, sleeping spider.  I tiptoe around because to wake the spider would mean death in the blink of an eye- no amount of love could save me from the suicide of waking the spider.

The web is surrounded my leaves that can either give me safe harbour or completely destroy the web either waking the spider or worse yet flinging me off into the void.  

My Gabbi was named for my Zaidy Dave- one of my favourite people in the whole world.  When my mom remarried never for one minute did he make me feel like any less that a full member of the Mechanic family.  I used to look forward to his visits, to playing chess and cards and even doing puzzles.  His death was the first time I felt a real loss in my life that was not filled by anything else.

Zaidy Dave affected everything he touched.  If it was a machine he made it better.  A person, he made them smarter.  And idea, he made it bigger.  No Jewish community in Windsor?  Build one!  No taxis?  Find some.  Things just rippled out from him like a pebble tossed into a calm pond.

More than anything in the world Zaidy Dave loved to be on the water.  Big boats, small boats, fishing boats- it didn’t matter he loved them all.  At the end of his life it seemed only fitting that even his tombstone bore the symbol of his life, a row of waves, across the bottom.

My Gabbi’s middle name is for Zaidy Dave.  Galit means waves and could there be any more fitting a tribute for a man who spent so much of his life causing ripples that affected everyone around him?

Sometimes, when I am in a daydreaming mood, I picture the two of them on Zaidy Dave’s Boat, the Lechaim, sailing off onto some adventure beyond the clouds with him as the captain and her as the tiny first mate in a pint sized purple life jacket he used to keep on board for my sister.

I miss you Zaidy Dave, and I miss you my Gabbi.  And I hope the two of you have adventures together that he rest of us can only dream of.

For those who pray and those who don't- and I know longer know which I am.

Can those who wish or pray please do so for another pregnancy as quickly as humanly possible- like now or at the very least before our trip to Toronto this summer. I don't think I can handle this void for much longer. Yes Channah was assisted, but Gabi was a total surprise- please wish, hope or pray for another spontaneous surprise asap. We are already aiming for it again.

I feel dead inside and I know right now that the only thing that can make my brain whole again is a baby in my arms. I had so focused my life on having a little one again I now have no idea what to do with myself. My body is healed but my brain is so broken. It is shattered into hundreds of millions of pieces each with a tiny picture of me with a baby on it. I have no idea how to put the puzzle back together without a real copy of the picture to look at. It is like trying to do a puzzle without knowing what it is supposed to look like.

I have dealt with depression before and now I have to wonder if I was faking it for attention. The pain of the grief in my heart is so sharp now that I keep needing to double check there is no real physical knife in my chest. The tears come for no reason at all- and for every reason under the sun. A beautiful day will send me into hysterics because Gabi will never see it. A hug from Channah will have me longing for another small set of arms around my neck.

Why did this happen to me? Oh lord I have always tried to be good and kind. To help those who needed it and to mind the feelings and sensitivities of those who might be in pain of their own. How could you in your majesty tease and bully me by playing "keep away" with the one thing I want so badly when I was so, so close to getting it.

Is it wrong to hate god? No that is the wrong the question., I don't think I can hate something I am not sure I believe in anymore. In those 5 minutes of silence in the ultrasound room my belief in that covenant was torn away from under my feet leaving me on the shakiest ground I could imagine. All my life I have been taught to turn to God in my times of trouble- now here he is the cause of it- to whom do I turn now?

My siddur and my Tehillim sit closed on the shelf, as do most of the books we have been given. At night I wake with nightmares and find myself sitting on the edge of the bed in Channah's room just watching her tiny body rise and fall- terrified that God will take something else I love from me. I want to hold her tightly and scream at God that "HE CAN'T HAVE HER! SHE'S MINE", but I know in my heart that God can do whatever he wants and better not to call attention to how much I love her.

My life feels empty save for for her tiny speck of light, and I so fear that light being extinguished I can barely breath.

God please, I hate you and I love you. You have given me so much and taken away so much. Please send me a healthy, full term pregnancy as quickly as possible to mend my heart and my brain from the extreme pain you have put them in. Please return me to a whole and sane state where I can be the parent and wife I want to be, and the woman I need to be.

Please God, I have no one to turn to but you. Avinu malkenu, my father my king. You can grant any wish my heart desires. Please see me as a daughter begging at your feet for true happiness only you can provide. Please allow me to say with a full and happy heart "who brought me happily and joyously to this day" as I had planned to do less than a week from now.

If you want to know how to bring me comfort.

Please.  

Debating God's role for me or how I must be special to him to have carried such a neshamah is no more a comfort to me than if anyone else were to lose a child.  

Right now, my relationship with God could loosely be termed "not good".  I always believed in a God who cared for his children like a father for his son.  I have cried to him for children, and sometimes he said yes, and other's he said no.  This time he said yes and teased me like a mean bully playing keep away with a favourite toy.

Each week at candlelighting I try to pray that God hold my Gabi as I wish I could be doing.  But I can't.  Both because she is in an unmarked grave and because I can't pray.  I look at a tehillim or a siddur and see only empty promises of a belief system that has been shattered for me.  I believed if I did my best to follow God's rules, whether I agreed with them or not, he would in turn look after me and my family.  

So please, spare me the "God must love you" and "God must have a bigger plan that you just can't see". And give me instead "I'm sorry.  You're right, you don't deserve this.  No mother should ever have to see her child put into a hole in the ground with no name, no marker, and no one to love her."  Remind me that Gabi is watching me and wants to see her ima be happy.  That she wants to watch her sister grow to a beautiful your lady who one day will, please God dance with more siblings at her wedding.  Who will raise a family of her own with please God fewer troubles than we see now.  Remind me that my Gabi is now a voice in God's ear praying for me when I can not pray, begging for me when I am too broken to beg on my own, that God grant me the strength to pull myself together not just for me but for Channah and for Jason.

That is the comfort I need.  Not how special I am because God took what I wanted most.

My dear Sweet little Gabbi, So many things I will never know about you.  What colour where your eyes?  Your hair?  Did you have the same long fingers as your sister or the same funny little toes.  What would your laugh have sounded like?  Your cry?  I want to know it all.  

You never heard the stories we told Channah- will never know about flutter and toro or blacky cacky.  Never heard the lullabies or felt us rub your back while we tried to soothe you to sleep.  I will never get to wipe your tears or snuggle you in the mornings.  You will never get a bracha from your Abba.

You will never feel the May wind on your face or see the streets lined with succahs.  Never wear a purim costume or dance with your Abba on simchat torah.  But you are my daughter and I love you so much I can not even begin to tell you how much I will miss you at each of those moments.  I can imagine your laugh and your smile- see your blue eyes that I imagine are just like your sister’s.  Feel your warm little arms around my neck.

My Gabbi I will never, ever forget you.  You are with me every moment of every day, and every minute is more lonely for your loss.  I love you so, so much.

2 ½ weeks have gone by now and I miss you more and more every day.  They tell me it will get easier, but I don’t believe them.  Each day is harder that the last.  Everyone keeps reminding me I need to go on for Channah and for your abba, but I only ache to have you in my arms.  I want to come be with you my sweet Gabbi- I only don’t know how to get there.    It takes more courage that I can get together.

I love you Gabbi.

This morning, for the first time since last Monday, I got up, got dressed nicely, and even put on jewelery.  We were going to the hospital to get the pictures of Gabi and I sort of hoped that if I looked confident I might feel confident.

My grandmother's best friend came along to hold my hand.

I actually came though it a lot better than I thought I would.  In many ways it was really a little bit therapeutic.

The pictures, her hospital bracelet and hospital card will go in my bottom drawer with other pictures that I do not look at most of the time.  A picture form my parent's wedding.  A picture with all my grandparents.  Of us leaving the hospital with Channah.  Our wedding day.   And now my Gabi.