The Missing and The Trying are The Constants

Dear Aabi

August is here. The month that rings beauty and love into our minds, hearts, and souls to the deepest. The month where a beautiful little miracle came into our lives and charmed us in new ways. In ways we didn't know love could be felt. Bringing in fresh new feelings of how a mother's first child now becomes an elder sibling, feelings of how two children can mean exactly the same to a parent, feelings of how sharing a mother's love with two children only means love grows and not divides. Baby, you create a whole new world with all new experiences for us.

What do we do now, darling? You are somewhere or not anywhere is the question we battle with day and night, and every moment. We are trying to understand, make sense, and absorb your absence. As strong is your presence that we feel inside us, as empty each day and each breath seems. It is, yet again, a new feeling, a new experience where love and pain so immense are co-existing now. This love and this pain, which cannot be just felt, only lived.

'Nothing is ever a constant in this world'. 'Nothing lasts forever'. 'Nothing is permanent'. Well, new revelation - NOT TRUE!

You not being here, not growing up in front of my eyes, not celebrating all your birthdays, not talking back to me, not asking for things, and me not being able to dress you or do anything for you is so damn permanent. It is hellishly permanent, devastatingly everlasting, and traumatisingly constant. No matter what I try to feel, understand, read, explore, or realise, this lands heavily and trumps everything. THE MISSING IS A CONSTANT!

We miss you all the time. Because we are able to compare the times and feelings of your presence with the present feelings and times. Your absence in the hours of the day is well realised, no matter how many spaces this mind generates, no matter how many feelings this heart gets from the 'signs' I am to now depend on. It is exhausting to all the time TRY to feel you, TRY to see you, TRY to hear you, TRY to read what you might be saying. I do try, baby girl, I do. You are a part of me, and I will feel you no matter what. You needn't have to be gone for that. Every mother can feel, read, know their child from any corner of the world, near or far. Yet, this trying that I have to do is exhausting. I have to look all around, at the sky, the birds, the surroundings, and even the sounds playing all around, to catch the moment you will TRY to communicate or tell me something. My heart is constantly in this hyper-aware state of not wanting to miss even a faint feeling or beat where you will send assurance or deny anything. THE TRYING IS A CONSTANT!

These constants are me, are us, are you. The missing is you being inside us, not tangibly, but in a way that probably does not have a word in this language for me to write. This month now is the month of realising this very feeling, a little more every time. Time - CONSTANTLY passing. Where we realise how your elder sister craves to plan the day again for a second birthday party in the house every year. How she will miss this experience year after year. How, if she does still want to do that, the party will miss the chief guest, the birthday girl, forever. How we, as parents, will know our baby is not growing up, not changing every birthday, no more picture collections of years of a new theme of choice every time. How we now hate counting your age in numbers. For us, we want to keep you little, 2 years and 8 months, a toddler, a dynamic little person who we aspired to and visualised as a strong little girl in the making.

And so, constants and permanents exist. There are enough mind games for us to learn to endure this absence of yours. We learn something new every day because of you, with you, for you, our lovely little daughter. August will remain yours to keep creating new experiences and new feelings for us. We will wait for you, endlessly, as we wish (against the odds) that time rewinds and we get another chance at the fullness of being with you.

August is the month an entire nation walks for their babies who are now carried only in the hearts. As our arms ache, we walk to remember every step in your name. Red Nose Australia's Red-Set-Go and Walk for Aabi is for our little special ones, whom we will walk towards, remembering them with each step.

Dedications.online is a platform that I have created to share these unfiltered thoughts. There are mothers like me, siblings, and parents like us who might find the gateway this sharing brings. I share in your honor, I share in your love, and I dedicate every new, to you, Aabi.