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Today is my MIL's birthday. Chris' brother, his wife and baby girl are out visiting her. I can hardly bear to think of calling her tonight and hearing the baby cry in the background. But I'll do it because I love her.

Pam has a conference in my city and is spending the night tonight. While I "should" want her near, my highest truth is that I just want to curl up in a ball tonight and sleep. But I got up this morning and cleaned the bathroom marinated some chicken to grill and put over salads tonight. I'll leave work a little early and put some brownies in mini muffin tins because everyone knows that it doesn't count if you eat brownies one inch at a time. I'll go to bed early, even though she'll want me to talk about it but she'll ultimately be okay with it because she loves me.

Two years ago today, we got confirmation that our (latest) baby's heartbeat had stopped. Anniversaries of such things are everywhere. Like landmines or a whack-a-mole, they literally pop up in my face without notice. Without regard to the fact that I'm in a meeting. Not caring that I can barely see or breathe enough to drive. There are missed due dates, missed birthdays, missed holidays. Because there are missing people. And today is the most glaring one of all because it is the most real to me and it has become the culmination of Hope Lost. Melodrama intended.

I don't talk about this much anymore (maybe that's part of the problem, Patricia) and I certainly don't blog about it much (it all seems like so much Lather, Rinse, Repeat, Repeat, Repeat) that I don't know how to get it to stop looping. The horror of it all, I mean. I have nothing to replace it with and little sense of how to do that.

Gee. I don't sound too healthy, huh? No argument here. And no filter here, either. Not today. Today is about surviving and maybe laughing at some recorded Idol tonight and eating too many brownies. Today is to be survived, but it is also for me to pause and acknowledge the pain as well as the strength God has given me to keep getting through it. Because the babies I lost are as real to me the other 364 days as they are today, one of the Big Fat Anniversaries. And so I put cryptic status updates on Facebook and I answer that I have allergies when two people say I sound stuffed up. I even come in and dust off the blog because I don't know where else to go with this but I have to go somewhere.

Because I love them.