No Matter What

I found this - a birth art - in one of my pregnancy notebooks today. Yes, after six months I am now able to go through some of my pregnancy stuffs with Kai. I remember I made this in a Birthing From Within demo class that my husband and I attended on my 37th week. In that class, the facilitator discussed about our fears regarding childbirth - paper tigers as they call it - and encouraged us to express through art how we are going to face them. My husband and I delved into the exercise with no clear sense of what we feared. At that time, we worried about emergency transfer to the hospital, emergency c-section, anything emergency that might happen to Kai. It didn't really occur to us about the worst-case scenario, we didn't want to think it. We wanted to be positive because isn't that what you're supposed to do when you're expecting a child and when you're so ready to meet him?

Anyway, I took hold of the oil pastels and just drew, a sort of stream-of-consciousness thing. No clear-cut goal to express, just letting a feeling take hold. When it came time to tell something about our artwork, I said that the two connected hearts were me and Kai. I can now recall the things I said in that class full of glowing mothers- and fathers-to be as vividly as if it was only yesterday. The room was warm and dimly-lit. We were all sitting on huge pillows in a circle - a powwow of expectant parents. I spoke softly yet with conviction. "The color blue is my watery womb. It means Kai is very much loved and thought of all the time. Meanwhile, the color black symbolizes my fears, all the emergencies that may or may not happen, all the things I have no control. I'm letting go of these things because I know NO MATTER WHAT happens, my son and I are connected. We will always be connected."

Today of all days I remember and hold onto to these words like my very life depended on it.

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Six months without you, my boy, and it feels like I'm a black hole, imploding within myself. I wish I could say that this past six months have been a blur. But that would be a lie. Every day of every month had been vivid so much so that life feels like it has been mocking me.
 
Sometimes I wonder if I'll be whole again. If this indescribable pain that made me a shadow of my former self will abate over time. The pain of not seeing you grow up, our dreams for you gone so easily. I know joy will be back, hope will show its face, but this doesn't take away the fact that my world is a little sadder, a whole lot lonelier without you in it. 

I miss you, Kai, to the moon and back, to the ends of the earth, to the deepest of oceans, and across the known universe. I love you as fiercely as the sun shines during high noon. I know someday we will find each other and never part ways ever again. We will always be connected. No matter what.