Day 15: Wave Of Light
October 15th was designated in 1988 by Ronald Reagan as Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. For today?s post, we were invited to light our candles for the Wave Of Light ceremony and then photograph them. If someone in each time zone lights a candle and lets it burn for one hour, there will be a continuous Wave Of Light spanning 24 hours and encircling the globe.
As I prepared to light my candles (one for Skye and another for the tiny baby I miscarried in July, 2011) I thought about the items I wanted in my display. I chose the ones that are the very dearest to me. I would have put out Skye?s pictures in their frames, but those are still packed away in a box awaiting a house and furniture to set them on, a more permanent place. The items I did choose, however, are among my few earthly treasures.
The 3 largest sculptures were painted by my sisters and given to me in 2009 for what would have been Skye?s 1 year birthday. There is an angel sculpture that came in one of the plants from her funeral, a plant I no longer have because some very depraved person came onto my fenced in porch and stole it from me. They may never know how my heart broke that day and I cried over losing my 2 plants, the only remaining living things I had instead of a baby to care for. There is a Willow tree angel I got at her funeral also, a Beauty From A Broken Heart sculpture I made this summer that bears her name and birthday, and 2 sculptures from The Midnight Orange, one a birthday gift this year from my mom and a one of a kind collaboration piece featuring a hand painted pebble from Casey Doiron, the other a sculpture I had custom-made to memorialize what Skye Blue has blossomed into this year, with my baby girl as my inspiration.
The lights themselves are simple, Skye has her name on one, and the other is smaller and nameless, like the early miscarriage I experienced. The flood of emotion that came hurdling up my throat when I viewed the finished display, however, that was far from simple. As I write this I am about 20 minutes into my hour of remembering. My 3-year-old daughter can be heard playing happily and innocently in the next room and my son, due to be born in just 9 weeks, is moving gently in my belly and those are complicated emotions too.
Today, 4 years ago, I attended the first funeral for Skye in Central Kentucky, then we tenderly and broken heartedly loaded her tiny coffin into the back seat of our humble Kia and drove 3 hours west, ready to lay her body to rest for good the following morning. It was not at all how we had planned taking our baby to that part of the state to meet many family members for the first time. She was not wrapped in a blanket, secure in her car seat, rosy with life. We were not smiling very much. The day was just as beautiful then as it has been today, though, clear blue sky and colored leaves and balmy weather. But our baby was in a box, at least her body was, and after we handed her box over to the funeral home there in Salem, we would never hold her again.
It was October 15th, 2008.
8 PM CST
Columbia Tennessee, USA
October 15th 2012
Filed under: biography, Grief, short and sweet Tagged: | baby, blog challenge, Capture Your Grief, Carly Marie, child loss, death, Elizabeth Skye Champion, Fall, family, God, grief, grieving, honesty, hope, inspiration, Kentucky, life, loss, love, October, October 15th, photo challenge, prayer, support, Wave Of Light
Source: http://natasiachampion.wordpress.com/2012/10/15/capture-your-grief-day-15-wave-of-light/
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