the tapestry of my life

so many mixed emotions today...life will always have it's ups and downs, sometimes you are high and sometimes you are low. what amazes me is the ability we have as humans to feel the contrast of opposite emotions at the same time. our one year anniversary is quickly approaching and three days later is the early delivery date of the baby that we lost in december. winter and december are words often used to describe the dark and difficult times in songs and poems, boy what a perfect fit in my case...it was the winter of my discontent, a cold and lonely december for me. earlier today i was thinking about this time last year, when dave and i were caught up in love and the excitement of our joyous union and dave's father died unexpectedly after a routine procedure eleven days before the wedding. it was such a tragedy, one that can only be understood if you have experienced it. there is something about losing a parent, maybe because of everything they are and have always been to you, because you associate your own identity with who they are, it is like losing a part of yourself. i think i cried as much as dave did, partially for his dad, partially for the loss of my own dad and a lot for dave and the pain he was feeling at such an enormous loss. i remember feeling bewildered as well. why did this have to happen now? why couldn't he at least be able to see us get married? the juxtaposition of these two events so close together made it hard to distinguish some of the tears shed at our wedding...some were happy tears, others tender tears of sadness at saying goodbye to the person who had raised this amazing man that i had the blessing of now having as a husband.

...so here we are one year later getting ready to celebrate our love and marriage and in the same breath sadness for loss and heartbreak of things that might have been. it is hard for me to think that we would be welcoming a new addition to our family right about now and all the joy and excitement that comes with a new baby...a very tender time for me and as i think back on my life some of my most painful moments have been paired with some of my greatest joys and accomplishments. it is something that i know i can not now, or probably ever, understand, but it is the way life seems to happen for me. i know that it is through adversity that we become strong, and that our past experiences and the way we personally choose to deal with them are key elements in shaping who we are and who we will become. it is the things we experience, good and bad, weaving tightly together that form the tapestry of our lives. i like the image of a tapestry, because it is the contrast of colors that make it beautiful. you would never notice how vibrant the yellows or pinks are if they did not have a contrasting dark color to make them pop. i was thinking about that today, about all of the struggles that i have had through the years, and wondering what i would be without them. if you take the painful experiences out of my life, i would cease to be me. the last six months have been a time of great self-discovery for me and i like to think that maybe i will be a better mother(when the time comes) because of it. not a better mother than anyone else, but a better mother now than i would have been if i had not had to walk this hard road. maybe i will be a little kinder, a little more gentle, maybe i will be more patient...but i know that i will cherish my babies, where i may have taken motherhood for granted if it was something that had come quickly and easily for me. life is sure a school of hard knocks. it always amazes me when i am, or anyone really, is crying and hear or see something funny and then laugh through the tears. maybe that is the only way to survive. maybe it is not so much that a bad thing happens at a happy time, but that bad things happen and we create happy happenstances to be able to make it through, like a survival technique, so we can laugh through the tears...