{"id":324,"date":"2009-01-23T17:10:26","date_gmt":"2009-01-24T01:10:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/?p=324"},"modified":"2009-01-23T17:13:22","modified_gmt":"2009-01-24T01:13:22","slug":"the-day-before","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/the-day-before\/","title":{"rendered":"The Day Before&#8230;."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tomorrow is the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.xangelle.com\/blog\/2006\/01\/23\/135\">4th anniversary<\/a> of the day that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jculley.com\/nathaniel\/\">Nathaniel died and was born<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s been a funny lead up to the day&#8230;.funny &#8211; different or funny &#8211; weird not funny &#8211; ha ha.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve talked about it off and on for the past month, but more &#8220;in passing&#8221; as opposed to an actual discussion about him or the day&#8230; and now&#8230;.here it is upon us.<\/p>\n<p>This is the first year that I&#8217;m very aware that I&#8217;m not grieving the day in a very hard way. I think that has a lot to do with the fact that since that time, we have been blessed with a living child. <\/p>\n<p>To be honest, I didn&#8217;t grieve this day last year very hard either, BUT I was out of town and busy and didn&#8217;t even really realize that the day had come until it was mostly over.  I was just trying to get thorugh the day in an &#8220;out of the norm&#8221; schedule and with a 4 month old.<\/p>\n<p>It was probably 6 or 7pm that evening that I realized that I had forgotten and really even at that point I had only a moment to feel terribly guilty that I had forgotten, and then my time was once again consumed with Siah and my surroundings.<\/p>\n<p>So, I&#8217;ve had this week, off and on, to remember and to put some thought into tomorrow.  I woke up this morning remembering how I woke up and felt uneasy that he wasn&#8217;t moving and how I tried to tell myself that it was nothing&#8230;.how I stressed all morning and then finally late in the afternoon we went to the hospital and it all began&#8230;..<\/p>\n<p>What a hellish day.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m so glad that I&#8217;m 4 years removed from the weighty emotions of that day.  I had a moment yesterday where I teared up thinking about a little boy who would have been around 4 years old&#8230;&#8230;but who is only a thought&#8230;not even a memory&#8230;just a dream or a hope.<\/p>\n<p>I think that we will do what we&#8217;ve done ever year except for last.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s the way that we celebrate life and remember Nathaniel.<\/p>\n<p>We will go out for breakfast and then go and buy some hellium ballons and write notes to Nathaniel all over them and then let them go in a near by park.  <\/p>\n<p>This year will be a little different with Siah around to get on it all&#8230;.I&#8217;m thinking that we&#8217;ll have to get a balloon that he can keep.  He&#8217;s not going to understnad why he had a balloon in his grubby little hands and then all of the sudden it&#8217;s gone and he can&#8217;t have it back&#8230;&#8230;too funny.<\/p>\n<p>Just because I can talk about all of this without feelig crushed under the heavy weight of grief doesn&#8217;t mean that I don&#8217;t still hurt thinking about all that we&#8217;ve lost.  It&#8217;s just a different kind of pain.  I think that if I had to describe it&#8230;it&#8217;s become a part of me.  I will always have this little piece of my heart that belongs to Nathaniel and while the wound of the loss is not immediate and fresh &#8211; there was still a wound and it left a permanent mark.  I&#8217;m okay&#8230;.in fact most days, I&#8217;m definately better than okay&#8230;.but I live with this&#8230;.this is just who I am.  I have a child &#8211; children actually &#8211; that I don&#8217;t get to hold and cuddle on a daily basis, BUT&#8230;&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>I do appreciate the children that I have, that MUCH MORE because of it, and even if that was all I got out of &#8220;all of this&#8221; then that&#8217;s amazing, but it&#8217;s not&#8230;there is SO MUCH MORE that I&#8217;ve learned and that has been given to me as a result of the loss and in a weird way, I&#8217;m thankful for what my children &#8211; ALL OF MY CHILDREN &#8211; have taught me.<\/p>\n<p>So, tomorrow we celebrate life!   If there was one thing I could leave with you it would be, <\/p>\n<p><center>&#8220;Live your life with no regrets!&#8221;<\/center><\/p>\n<p>I hope your day tomorrow is full of love, and peace and hope.  Mine will be!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tomorrow is the 4th anniversary of the day that Nathaniel died and was born. It&#8217;s been a funny lead up to the day&#8230;.funny &#8211; different or funny &#8211; weird not funny &#8211; ha ha. We&#8217;ve talked about it off and on for the past month, but more &#8220;in passing&#8221; as opposed to an actual discussion &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/the-day-before\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The Day Before&#8230;.&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,33,12,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birthdays","category-deep-thoughts","category-family","category-nathaniel"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":326,"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324\/revisions\/326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}