Hope and Heartache

Before I had children, I really was not a “kid person”. I had never babysat, and before my own daughter was born, I don’t think I’d ever held a baby in my life. Kids were something foreign that, truthfully, kind of scared me. I’ll never forget the day I gave birth to my daughter. The nurse handed her to me - and then left the room! I stared at this tiny little girl laying in my arms, scared out of my mind. I didn’t know anything about how to take care of a baby, and yet here was this beautiful little baby, looking up at me with her big, brown eyes, expecting me to fulfill all her needs, raise her, and keep her safe. Even though I was scared, it was the most wondrous thing that has ever happened to me, and my life was instantly changed forever.

For the first 4 months of her life, all she did was sleep most of the time. She’d wake up occasionally, cry, need a diaper change, then go back to sleep. I thought, “Wow. This sucks!”. But then, she started growing and learning. Every new discovery revealed her personality even more. She was so inquisitve and curious, and she always pushed herself to do more and learn more. By age two, she was potty-trained and talking well. By three, she had taught herself to read and write. By age 4, she was reading 3rd-grade level books voraciously, and she was a whiz at math. She taught herself cursive writing before she turned 5. Her insights into everything always blew my mind, because she always thought about things in depth and questioned everything. I remember when she was three, and she asked me, “Mama, why do they say there’s 24 hours in a day?” I said, “Uh - because there are!” She said, “No, there’s about 14 hours in a day and then 10 hours in a night”. She always thought about things in a way that I never had, and I loved learning about the world through her eyes. When my other two children were born, they added to the wonder that I found in the world, as I could now see the world through their eyes. Mundane things that I never even noticed became works of wonder and beauty through their eyes. They taught me how to see and think in a whole new way. The world was different, and with them in my world, it was a million times better.

Now that they’re away from me, there isn’t one moment in each 24 hours that I don’t think of them. If I watch a show on TV, I yearn to be watching it with them. If I go to a store, I cry because I miss the, “Mama, look at this! Mama, can I have this?” conversation that invariably happens each time we step foot into a store. When I sit at home in silence, sometimes I can almost hear their jubilant voices as they argue with each other and express their opinions. I used to hate the fighting, but what I wouldn’t give to be able to sit and hear it again!

Being away from them is completely and totally unbearable. It’s been two years since they were kidnapped, and time does NOT make it any easier to cope. In fact, it makes it harder. I think about things like, “Do they remember my face? Do they remember the awesome things we spent doing together? Has their father succeeded in convincing them that I am a bad mother who abandoned them and never cared about them? When can we be together again, God?”

Most days, I try to go on and cope by staying busy and by staying away from things that remind me of them the most. I stay away from stores as much as possible, because I cry when I see other mothers shopping with their children. Mostly, I keep busy working around the house. I have a woodburner that heats my house in the winter, so I spend enormous amounts of time out collecting wood, bringing it home, cutting it up, splitting logs, and stacking it for the winter. It’s hard work, and it’s very time-consuming, so it keeps my mind busy. I love Dean Koontz books, so I spend my down-time getting fully involved in his stories. Basically, I’m always trying to escape the crippling fear that I’ve lost my kids forever and the unbearable feelings of loss and all that should be - but isn’t - that define me these days.

But some days, nothing works. These last three days have been like that. All I can do is cry. And cry and cry and cry some more. I don’t have the energy to move, and I just can’t stop crying. That’s one of the reasons I decided to write and put my thoughts online. Writing can be cathartic, and I think it has helped me to cope.

I wonder, when things are too much and you feel like you can’t stand up under the weight of your burdens, how do you cope? How do you get through the next 24 hours? If you want to share your thoughts, I’d love to hear about them. Maybe tomorrow will be a better day….