We never learned the gender for our children prior to their birth. With Sonzee being the 4th Sam had actually wanted to know, but because for the previous 3 he didn't want us to find out, I decided we should stick with our pattern. We already had a girl, then a boy, and then a girl, in my mind of course baby #4 would be a boy. How could it not be? Me an (at the time) very much type A person, there would be no doubt, no question, we would have 2 boys and 2 girls. The perfect family. Afterall, we were evening out the odd number of children, so there wasn't a way we could have an odd number of girls to an odd number of a boy. 3 weeks prior to baby #4's arrival I had a panic attack. We have a boy's room and a girl's room, BUT, what. if. baby. #4. is. a. girl? How would that work? You can't have 3 girls in one room. It didn't make sense. And then....Sonzee was born. A "healthy baby girl" as Sam would write on our social media announcement. I cringed. I asked him why on earth he'd write that. Was he challenging Hashem?? 4 (very long) weeks later, we would learn she had epilepsy, so I guess he was. Within 2 months my perfect image of what our perfect family was going to be, was no longer (but hey, she did have blue eyes so there was always that).
This year for Passover we traveled to Florida. We took a day trip to Key Largo today to go on Jet skis. Our initial plan was 3 jetskis, Sam with our oldest boy, the 2 girls together, and me with our youngest. Then (as most of my planning goes these day) Hashem said, nah, let's do 2 jetskis, all 6 people can fit on 3, so we will do one for the boys and one for the girls. And so we did. Almost 2 hours into our ride and on the return after so much laughter, speed, and smiles we were idling under a bridge and a nearby boat (aptly named: "This is the Way") and a person on the boat waved to me and as I waved back my inner dialogue took over.
"Oh wow, 2 jetskis, one that has the boys with the father and one with the girls with the mother, that's even, that's perfect, what a perfect family, 2 and 2"
"But no, there is another, she just isn't on the jetski's, because she is dead, and even if she were alive, she wouldn't be on the jetskis, in fact, would we even be on this trip? What would we have done? What would we have done for the last 5 years? Not all of these #lifeexperiences"
The heavy hit of grief smacking me in the face, almost cringeworthy to say it was similar to the wind and saltwater doing that simultaneously. Ironic I was on a jetski in an ocean with waves when the grief hit. Another memory a video about grief related to waves. Eventually the grief settles, similar to the waves, but you really don't know when, or how high the waves will be. You know after 5+ years there will be more waves, but you also know they aren't as insurmountable as they once felt, there is a break between them where you can actually breathe, and you can actually see the beauty that is all around you. You know, or rather I'd say you can acknowledge that even though you are no longer whole, you are no longer that unit of perfection that wasn't but was, you still have the perfect family; 2 living boys and 2 living girls, and from the view of others, and in reality, it is actually perfect, but it's always going to be missing the 3rd jetski.
