10 months

It's hard to believe that 10 months have already passed. Life is back to "normal" - get up, go to work, come home, make dinner, watch TV(read, play whatever fills the time), go to bed... Even "normal" doesn't feel normal anymore.

I used to love my job. I worked constantly - not because I had to, but because I needed to. There were just to many things that I wanted to do. After adopting Amelia I tempered that energy and spent more time at home with my family but that passion still existed. Today, 10 months after PE stole my child, my passion is gone. My job depends on my passion for creating. I am a creative director who can't create. I'm stuck. Is it writers block if you don't write? Or is it just plain inertia? I didn't see it coming and didn't feel it as it happened - but all of a sudden I am completely aware that I have lost all desire to win. I haven't lost my ability to design - I have lost my desire to design.

Everyone else who comes and goes in my daily life has moved past Ellie's death. It's as if my daughter never existed. And I guess to them she never did.

Because of the deflated state of our economy I have had to be party to many, many downsizing measures in the past year. And if you've been following my story here you know my husband was one of the casualties. After the last round of layoffs my boss was looking for consolation, comiseration and absolution for all of the horrible things he had been forced to do. In the past I would have given him a hug and told him it wasn't his fault. That he was just doing what had to be done. That it was the nature of business. That it was the only way we could keep the company going.

This time the only comment I could come up with was it has been a shitty fucking year. That 2008 was without a doubt the worst year of my life. And he gave me a look - and then I could see the realization wash over him.

Almost 30 years ago one of his children died too. His wife gave birth to twins at 27 weeks. One twin died, but one twin survived. In my own brand of obscene jealousy I can't help thinking how lucky he was that even though one child didn't get to come home - one did.

There was another tragic death in our family recently. One more little one lost. One more mother who left the hospital without her baby. There is no end to tragedy in this world.

I used to think that people who thought of birth as a miracle were sappy dopes. But I now know that it is truely a miracle. We have no control over the life or death of our children. Just because they are alive one day doesn't mean that they will be the next.