Episode 10: Forever Changed

There’s no “going back to normal” option. We knew this when we decided to get pregnant. We knew this as we prepared for life as parents. We knew this in the days and hours leading up to her due date and we knew this when we were driving to the hospital that afternoon - for the second time that day - anxious to meet her.

We knew that she would change us forever. There was not a sliver of a doubt about that. We pictured our lives together. What it would look like, be like, feel like. Who she would become. She was the opening - the opening to this next chapter of our lives.

What happened next, however, is what people might call the unimaginable. An experience some may say, “I cannot imagine”. It’s funny though, how quickly and forcefully the “unimaginable” whips you into the present the moment it becomes your reality.

Is it the unimaginable because we can’t imagine it or because we don’t want to?

Even being able to contemplate that question is a luxury, really, and when that luxury is stripped away from you, you are left without a choice. You are forced into the present. You are there, in that moment and nowhere else as your mind attempts to make sense of, to process, what is happening. And, lurking in the shadows is the impenetrable fear of what comes next, what this means, how you will carry on, how you will survive.

I distinctly remember the moment everyone got quiet, sat down, and looked at me. At us. The words coming out of the doctor’s mouth were gentle, clear, and direct. A few words of fact. Forever changed.

In this case, though, change seems like a funny word. We are all changing. Every day. There are things happening, countless things, all of the time, that leave us changed.

This is different.

I can see myself in that moment, and the moments to follow. Taking in information, making decisions slowly and deliberately. Numb.

I can see a husband and a wife, a mom and a dad, grappling with the reality that their daughter is gone. I can see a family coming together in anguish, disbelief, pain, and love. I can see a woman giving birth to her beautiful daughter and I can see them as they say goodbye.

One foot in front of the other. “This is going to be impossible” she said. And then she kept on.

People might wonder what it is like. Horrifying and possible. Gut wrenching and real. It seems to me now that we don’t know the true depths of our strength until we are pushed to the places, into the experiences and reality that we “can’t imagine”, or don’t want to.

I will say, though, that life without her, without Nora, here in my arms, is unimaginable. It doesn’t seem real, yet I know deep within my bones that it is. She was here, and then she was gone. I ache for her. And will continue to for each and every day of my life.

There really is no going back to normal. The reality is, there never was. There never was going to be. What even is normal, anyway.

So, instead, we move forward in this new reality - forever changed by her. By Nora. A story to be imagined, yet to be written.