Missing My Little Junebug

As the heat of June settles in, I feel her in the air. I'm taken back to her 2-month check up when she too had her shots. She didn't even cry. She just had this startled look on her face. I was so proud of her.

We showed her off around the hospital where her pediatrican, obgyn, and NICU family knew her well. And then we took her out to a little neighborhood kitchen for Mexican food when we were done. She sat in her car carrier and dozed while dh and I had dinner.

We stopped at the Walgreen's to pick up a replacement Rx for her heart medicine since hospice had taken the other one. There was also an Rx to help with her constipated tummy.

It was a few moments when I let my guard down, and for a fleeting fragment of time I let myself believe that I got to keep her. To my dismay, only a few hours later she was dead in my arms. It caught us completely off guard. Once again our frail illusions were shattered.

I was such a zombie through the rest of that summer. We've not been back to that neighborhood kitchen since that day--there's been no reason to go all the way across town in that direction.

As the heat of the season starts to bear down, I'm reminded of that
frazzled,
reeling,
exhausted,
overpowering sense of suffocating anguish
--gasping & flailing through the heavy darkness;
--grappling with how I'd make it;
--groaning under such incredible weight of sorrow...


I miss her like crazy--all the coos she made; the beginnings of purposed smiles; and omgosh the grand strides she embarked on as she sought to be in control of her own head. I miss how the crook of my arm would get hot & sweaty from holding her so long--how her unruly hair would get matted and damp.

Yes, she was so very sweet. And I said it the day after she died and I'll say it again, "I have no idea what I'll do without her." I guess I'm still trying to figure that out...