Sonzee "turns" 6

Dear Sonzee Bear, 

Another birthday we didn't get to celebrate together, it seems wrong to have a day on the calendar in honor of the birth of you when you are no longer here.  Aba made a statement about how he didn't want to celebrate today because a birthday is the celebration of life, and now there is nothing to celebrate.  Valid (horrifically painful) point.  Man, this sucks.  I wish I could say this year was easier than last year, but it isn't, it is far worse.  I hope it was the exact opposite for you.

I wore my usual birthday outfit in honor of you despite the circumstances.  Had I actually ventured out into public and had a conversation about the balloon leggings, I am sure it would have been fantastic to mention I was wearing them in honor of my dead daughter. I spent this morning with Corrinne's mommy.  We spent the time literally sitting on you, drinking our Starbucks in some beautiful Phoenix weather.  It was the perfect way to spend your day.  I can imagine you had an extravagant party considering so many of your friends are with you for this one.  I hope they made you feel beyond special.  I hope you ate cake and ice cream and ran around in a beautiful wonderland with your curly pigtails and no doubt, a cute outfit.  You have probably another year until you would be too old to wear the pigtails without rolling your eyes at me.

Besides decorating your grave, I am sorry we didn't do anything to celebrate you.  No one here even mentioned cake or cupcakes in your honor.  I mean, to be honest, besides that horrible keto cupcake I made for your first birthday, you never had more than a lick or bite of food anyway, so what would have been the point?! Meena made a sign for you and hung it on the front window.  Today she finally got her "Sonzee and I" book.  Now all of your siblings have a book of you and them individually.  

I spent some time today, as much as I could before it was just simply way too difficult, looking at your birthday pictures.  I realized that for 4 years we were distracted with the reality of what today really was.  You were here, so the focus became on celebrating you, and now you are not, so the focus went back to the day we first met. You were able to meet your siblings one by one, and I have some of the sweetest pictures of them standing on stools to be able to touch you, but it wasn't the first meeting I had envisioned.  There was a picture of the lab results the NICU team wrote on paper, at the time I didn't understand any of it, but it makes me chuckle now that I can talk medical slang like it's my job.  It was such an emotionally draining day, but it turned out to be the most accurate foreshadowing of your life.  Me with you in a hospital, scared and unsure of what was going on and going to come for a lengthy period of time, and aba at home with your siblings.  

Oh, my little girl, I wish there was some compromise I could make with g-d to be able to peak through a window into your world.  I trust you are beyond amazing.  I trust you are free and your soul has elevated to the highest place possible, and maybe even beyond because of your incredibleness. But I am just so lost without knowing the specifics.  You can go ahead and laugh at how my gut isn't enough for me anymore and I need the proof.  

I wish you another incredible year full of comfort and peace, and I selfishly wish that you would find a way to help me find just a little of that for myself without you being here.

Happiest of what would have been your sparkly, shining, glitzy 6th birthday my love.

Love always, 

Ema