Pockets of grief

Today, I put on the dress that I wore to the wedding, the dress I was wearing when we drove to the ER and said goodbye to our sweet baby seven and a half weeks ago.

I washed the dress after bleeding on it, and when it came out of the dryer, it had inexplicably been stained by something else. I stain treated it and washed it again. And it happened again. Finally, it looked clean, but I discovered more stains on the back. So I washed it again. Finally actually clean, I hung it up. That was a few weeks ago now.

Today I put it on without emotion, glad it wasn’t stained and I could wear it again. I put my hands in my pockets and found something plastic. A hospital band.

I held it for a moment before I threw it away. Emotions and memories welled up and I pushed them back down, in a hurry to go run an errand.

And that is life now. Thinking about how far along I would be or remembering something without meaning to. Sometimes I feel very little, other times I cry, sometimes my eyes fill with tears and I brush them away, take a deep breath and move on. Today, I moved on, but it wouldn’t really leave me.

So now I’m sitting in my van, fighting the tears but not quite as hard as before. Life moves on, and I know the acute pain doesn’t last because I have already moved past it. But I am surprised by the times when it’s there out of nowhere, and I want to weep again. I go back and forth between being frustrated by the grief and being frustrated by my impulse to suppress it.