These are for a very special project for a group close to my heart.  Because it's far from where I live, I didn't join until recently maybe a month or two ago and I have been so grateful for the friendship and support I have found there.  My Healing Place is helping people at a time when they can barely go on with their lives.  This is very difficult work emotionally and physically.  Not to mention spiritually and intellectually!  They are having a luncheon in a few weeks- for more info go here.  I was so grateful to share these moments with my MIL and with the photographer.  I am so glad to have these pictures to honor Samantha.  Her scrapbook has meant a great deal to me. 
I often feel it was God who gave me that gift.  I went to a fundraiser with my mom only weeks after Samantha passed away.  There was a scrap-booking set which I wanted so much- my mom got it for me :).  The rest is history.  I knew as soon as I got it that it was for Samantha.  I had never really scrapped before so I didn't feel I knew what I was doing- but I needed something I could do for Samantha.  Something I could hold and touch and create.  I wanted to make something beautiful amid the horrific ugliness of my grief.  Everttime I went to buy paper or stickers there was a heaviness about it.  I wondered if the people at Hobby Lobby noticed I was crying.  At first I was looking for black paper.  Maybe white and gold for heaven and some little crosses.  But as I went along I found some beautiful kind of romantic paper.  This allowed me to be much more true to my hurt but also who she really was.  Her death did not define her life.  I was able to focus more on the special memories of the time I spent with her instead of saying goodbye.
This chance to add to my book and to capture where we are right now in honoring Samantha was such a gift to me.  I hope you can see how much we love her and miss her. And how this book has allowed me to share Samantha with my daughters.  They had such fun pointing out Mommy and Daddy and Sissy.  It was so therapeutic to create and so healing to look at. 
At my support group last night they asked a great question.  What did your loved one teach you?  I said "To be present for each moment"  Then she asked me "How?" Whew - what a question.  By her attentiveness and her bright eyes.  By her little cries and her nursing and her wiggling and her snuggling she gave me all these gifts and I wish I had been more present for each one.  As I write memories of her I am digging out those little treasures buried in the fog of NICU life.  But I want to make sure that I am present for all the moments I can of her sisters' lives because life is short.   Also, I am so glad to have people to share that with and to create moments like these pictures at My Healing Place.

The Inevitable Question

We made some new friends today.  Sometimes I actually avoid meeting new people just because I know they will ask.  "How many children do you have?"  And it feels so terrible to answer two.  I know I'm not really betraying Samantha, but tell that to my stomach.  We talk about where we are from and I talk about how I was pregnant when we moved... pregnant with Hannah.  Since I'm not sure I want to get into it.  But I do want to acknowledge her.  So I just think about her and wish she was here.
I was working on a page in my scrapbook and I noticed once more my missing 16 days.  The last pictures we took of Samantha were from February 24.  I think actually we have one from March 5 but you can't see her face very well.  There were 2 weeks where she was gaining weight, nursing, taking all her food by mouth, and failing sleep tests.  Her little cheeks were filing out and her personality was emerging.  She was so alert that the nurses put a little black and white design in her crib so that she would have something to entertain her.  They moved her out of the room where she and Hannah had been by themselves, out to the spot where she had been when they first were born.  Or it may have been the spot Hannah was in right next to her.  I remember sitting with her resting on my forearms on on my lap. Her sparkling eyes were looking up at me.  We were just making faces at each other.  Just "talking".  A nurse came by and asked if we were playing googly eyes.  We were.  All this time we got to know each other, we were expecting her home any day.  I never brought a camera to the hospital except on my phone and used it very rarely.  It didnt seem like a time I would want to remember.  If I could just get her home then life could begin.  Hannah came home 2-28-10.  I really thought she would be home by March 6 the next friday.  They kept telling me that her lips turned blue when she ate and she was having trouble breathing when she ate.  I never had that problem so it was hard to be concerned or even understand why that would keep her from coming home.  When Hannah came home it was as if one day they said she was ready and the next day they were discharging her.  Naturally I was expecting a similar experience with Samantha.  Well, that's one twin lesson I did learn.  They are completely separate individuals.  So Samantha's homecoming was delayed three times.  After she passed away someone told me- thank God they didnt send her home with me. Many times I wished they had, so at least she could have come home, and Alexandra could have met her.  We could have all been together even if just for a short time.  But in my heart I don't believe she would have died.  I would never have given her rice cereal in her bottle.  I never needed to. And anyway, she would have been with her mama.  It's so hard not to believe that if her mommy had been holding her she wouldnt have gotten sick.

But I realize this is a futile and negative line of thinking.  This is the last picture I have of her.  March 5she was 4 weeks and 5 days old.  She was still only 36 weeks adjusted and it's one week before she died.  All I really mean to say is that I wish I had pictures of those 16 days.  So I try to take as many pictures as I can of my Hannah Banana.  And whenever someone asks me the inevitable question, I answer as honestly as my heart can and tell Samantha I will never forget her.

The First Entry

There have been so many days I had things to say and nowhere to say them.  I thought about opening a word document but it felt too lonely.  I wanted to start a blog but it needed a title and I would have to start from the beginning which is always hard.  I want to share where I am.  I need a place to remind the world that Samantha was here.  I need a place to hear Samantha's name and say it and see it and tell stories about her and remember the time I spent with her and share pictures of her.  I need her to be a part of my life so that I can stop thinking about how she would have been a part of my life and start acknowledging how she is a part of my life.

An important way I got through that first year was with my Scrapbook.   It was something I could touch and hold and do with my memories of Samantha.  This is one of my favorite pages.




This is where she is buried at Our Lady of the Rosary Cemetery in Georgetown.  I wish I could visit her everyday.  But I hope that by starting this blog I will be able to keep her closer. 
To read our story start here.