Dear Alex,

Today you should be four months old. You should be starting to eat solid foods (as the Gerber people keep telling me). You should be developing a little personality and learning to interact with others. You should have outgrown 3-6 month clothing already and you should be wearing 6-9 month outfits your grandma couldn't resist buying you even though she really can't afford it. You should be getting all ready for your first Halloween in your pumpkin costume. You should be making those first efforts to sit up all by yourself. You should be smiling and cooing at friends and family.

Instead, you are five months gone.

You left more than the emptiness in my tummy and the gaping hole in my heart when you left. You left these little swiss-cheese-like holes all over the place in our lives. Everywhere I look I see them. I hate them.

I was thinking yesterday how lucky I am to have loved enough to grieve for you. I knew the blessing of carrying your little soul around with me for those 35 weeks. That is why this is so hard...why it makes me so sad to not be able to see you and hold you...because I love you so much.

I took you a pumpkin and some bright fall flowers yesterday. Can you see them? Do you even know they're there? Do you know how many tears I cry for you every single day? Does it matter? Or are you just gone...nothing left but my memories?

Assuming you can still hear me, I've just got a bit of a rant I want to share. I'm sorry Alex, but you should know your mom's got a bit of a temper...nobody's perfect.

I have heard people say, for a variety of reasons over the past few days, that everything happens for a reason. Am I really supposed to take comfort in the fact that this is what I'm supposed to have? I do feel blessed to have met the wonderful people I have since you died...but is it really supposed to matter to me that I can talk to people about dead babies because I've had this experience? Doesn't it matter that I loved you so much and I wanted you here with me? Does God really think it was worth your life to teach me some lesson? Tell God I think that sucks and I hate him for it.

That's not true. I hate this...but I don't hate God. I'm entirely pissed off at God and wondering a lot about who he is and how he's supposed to fit in...but I don't hate him. I did. But my hatred has softened into mere anger, just as my grief has softened over the past five months into a sadness that I can manage. Don't get me wrong, I still have a temper. But I am learning to measure my right to be angry against others who have suffered more or worse then we have.

A friend talks about seeing tragedies around the world in a new way. Looking at the big picture and, while not wishing ill on others, saying to oneself, "Yeah, that's how it feels." You know what though? I'm sure there is someone looking at me and saying, "yeah, that's how it feels," as though I've got it good. I'm sure there is someone comparing their life to mine and thinking, "she finally got a small taste of what it's like." Of course I know the world doesn't know ME. But I've got a great life comparatively speaking. There's just this one thing that went wrong...one thing I would change.

There is just one thing I would change. Daddy and I talked about that a while back. We were so completely happy. We had a house, pets, family...it was all just right...such that if we had to do it all again we wouldn't change a thing because we really liked where we had landed. oooh boy, can that come back to bite you. I'll know now to never say something like that again. I wonder...what would you choose? Maybe you didn't want to be with us? I know that can't be true. You fought so hard to stay with us. If only we had paid better attention to your pleas for help...

Is there a reason for everything Alex? You've presumably got all the answers now. Would you mind whispering one or two in my ear as I sleep? I've always been the analytical one...the one who needed answers. This not knowing is killing me. Would it break all the rules if you just helped me a tiny bit here?

Some day I hope to be able to celebrate that you existed. Right now I'm still mourning that you don't.

I miss you to the moon and back my little one.