Hope

Whether in daydreams or during night's sleep, I can often close my eyes {or even just stare off into space} and remember even the smallest details of that day. The room was cold, but I felt so hot, rustling my feet under the thin sheets provided to me. I can still feel the tightening and loosening of the leg pumps velcroed to me to prevent blood clots and assist in circulation. I had been in that bed, in the same tilted position for over 18 hours. To my right, past the IV drips hooked up to my arm, I see J in his gray hoodie, jeans, and black tennis shoes alternating between watching TV and looking at the monitors strapped onto what seemed like every open bit of skin I had. The sun was visible from time to time beyond the room's partially open blinds and the thick patches of clouds outside. It still felt bleak. To my left there are several monitors, all hooked up to various cords on my chest and stomach, their screens with bouncing dots and lines showing my heartbeat and those of the girls. Inside my belly, I can feel my daughters moving, and with each kick and turn and somersault, my heart both raced in so much love for the lives inside me and dropped from the knowledge that it wouldn't be long now until those movements ceased, and I would be left alone with an empty belly and staring into what would be flat lines on the monitor screens.

The only thing worse than the dread of what was to come was the actual time when it all happened. I never knew so much heartache and love could pour out of one person and do so simultaneously as when I held my girls and when I saw J whispering his goodbyes to them. Like I said before, it was the best and worst moments of our lives, all rolled up into these quiet and somber minutes inside this cold room, on this bleak day. 

Exactly a year ago today was the moment when everything and nothing made sense. There was no past or future and I could have sworn this could be the moment that was the most definitive one of my life. This moment could summarize my purpose, my story, and my future.

But such was not so. In moments like that, it is easy to forget that there is someone else who has a plan for us. One year later, I realized that that moment was not a culmination of my life; it was merely one that would be the biggest testimony I would have when my time comes. One year later, while it remains the most cathartic moment, it most certainly is not the sole definition of who I am as a person.

If anything, it strengthened both my relationship with J and our relationship with God. And if there's anything that is the most striking evidence for our faith, it's this: Today, I have another life growing inside me and we are looking forward to her introduction to this world this summer. 

J and I discussed that more than the nursery tour post {coming soon, as soon as the nursery is done}, this post would be the best way to reveal Baby B #3's name. 

We chose Hope for many obvious reasons. Her sisters' middle names are Faith and Grace, and especially after losing them, there was nothing that gave us a better outlook than telling each other that "Hope is on the way". For some reason, despite our tragedy, we always knew that Hope was just around the corner. We keep Faith and Grace in our hearts and God will bring us Hope. This was the cornerstone of our reinforced relationship with Him and He knows that it is what has kept us going.

Camden was a choice that we came across during our search for a name. We had discussed many names, but we wanted something unique, something that could hold a candle to her sisters' names, and something that we would be equally as proud of as we are of Aubrey and Finley. I came across Camden one day and suggested it to J. It took a while for the name to really grow on him, and I gave him the time and space to think about it. It was only right before he decided and approved that I looked up the meaning of the name. Camden is of English origin and it means "from the winding valley". It really sealed the deal with us because her name really reflects our journey: From the winding valley, there is HOPE. 

To commemorate Aubrey and Finley's birthday today, we put one of the final touches to Camden's room, one that brings her, her sisters, and us, their parents, together as a whole family. {I found it online a few months after losing Aubrey and Finley. It could not be any more perfect and I hung on to it knowing that it would be in the next baby's room.}

Whenever a big catastrophe in the world happens {i.e. the tsunami in Japan, the earthquake in Haiti, the damage of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana}, you can almost always count on a "One Year Later" documentary or two. While incomparable to the mass destruction of those tragedies, this was our own personal catastrophe -- it rocked our world and reshaped our lives and outlooks. And now, one year later, we have slowly picked up the pieces of our shattered hearts and glued them together in preparation for Camden Hope to come.

Many people say that the culmination of their journey as humans is embodied in their children. I think it could be safe to speak for both J and me and say that Camden Hope is the culmination of our journey as a family. She is not the beginning, but is the road that leads from Faith and Grace and is the source of Hope. It really doesn't get any better than that, and I know that no matter what happens, I can close my eyes {or stare off into space} and those dark and bleak days I see will break into new and sunnier days.

Sometimes I Get Scared

I am currently 10 weeks, 3 days pregnant. 
In the middle of all this elation, all the love, excitement, and yes, anxiety, I get scared.

I get scared sometimes that all the excitement of this new baby is making us begin to forget about the two we lost.
I miss our girls so much.
When I rub this belly and talk to this baby and have J rub the belly to say good morning or good night, I think of Aubrey & Finley.
They would have been four months old now.
What color would their eyes have been?
What would their personalities have been like?
We got a taste of it with them in utero
but once they came out and grew, would they have been shy, showoffs, rambunctious?
I think of them often
and make sure I do so
because I don't want their memory to simply disappear
just because we are getting ready for a new baby.
May seem weird, but I'm actually afraid for the day to come when I don't cry at the thought of them. 
{Someone who has been through a similar experience did tell me, however, that even 38 years later, they still do cry, which is further proof that you really never, never get over the loss of a child.}

Two days ago, I installed the new Facebook timeline
and I started to play around with it. It is so much easier to peruse through and see old posts, pictures, messages. I laughed at some of my posts -- how silly they were, how long ago they had been, how different I had been, even a mere two, three, four years ago.

And then, unexpectedly {and I don't know why I didn't even expect it}, I came across the hundreds of inbox messages and wall posts sent in by friends and family all over the world when we lost the girls. They were messages of so much love and support and prayer, of sadness, disbelief, and even confusion.
And just as I didn't expect to come across those messages and that time in my life just nine ever-so-short months ago, I cried.

This is how I know
With every rub of this belly,
every sweet word of love said to this little one,
every prayer sent to heaven asking God to watch this baby and keep him or her safe,
is also sent to our little angels.


I know I will never forget my girls. 
We will never stop mourning them.
And as long as we have this baby,
in utero or after birth
we'll have someone to hold the love to give to his/her sisters someday too.

 

A 5:00 a.m. Entry

It is 5:27 a.m. and I've been awake for about an hour and a half now.
No, my alarm has not gone off.
And I'm not going to lie -- I had no plans of an early gym day.
This early morning insomnia, I'm presuming, is caused by the volumes of hormones I've been taking for weeks now.


Not that I'm complaining.
My eye is as prize-focused as it has ever been,
but at some point, this lack of sleep starts to mess with one's mind.


Another side effect of the hormones is frequent urination {lovely, huh?}, and mind you, for me, waking up even once in the middle of the night to go potty is A LOT... so you can imagine how waking up an average of three times per night ever night in the past two weeks has really affected me.


Neurotic enough as I am, during those moments of potty-going, I have to monitor my brain activity. It's a thin line between being aware enough not to hit my knee on the side of the bed for the eighty-seventh time on my way to or from the restroom, and the one where my brain becomes too aware and starts running off with thoughts that, really, are not necessary at 3 or 4 a.m.


But then a moment like this morning hits... when I let my brain be too aware, and suddenly, instead of finding myself drifting back to sleep for at least another 2 to 3 hours, the lists start to form:

• Put makeup in travel bag so as to have it available next to me during bedrest.
• Make a craft basket full of supplies, so as also to keep it next to me during next week's bedrest.
• What do I even include / not include in the craft basket?
• Reason with John so he would not be so leery to have me keep a glue gun next to me next week.
• What food to order this weekend for when my extended family comes to visit: Los Golondrinas? Bad to the Bone BBQ? {I'll be on bedrest so no, John is not allowing me to cook for the family this time.}

My mind wanders to so many different topics and goes through so many different emotions in these dark and quiet early morning hours:

• Anxiety about the embryo transfer -- what if it doesn't work? What if we have to go through with this one more painful time?
• Irritation and anger at people who have told me they hope I have twins again {despite the dangers and risks that they know it entails} just to say that they have twins in their family. While I am not against it if God wills it, it's not funny or cute to joke of risk... and it makes me wonder, do they say they mourn Aubrey & Finley with me only because they were twins? {Believe it or not, someone really has told me this}
• Hey, way to be passive aggressive, Angela.

Being alone with one's thoughts is not always pretty, but the key to holding it all together and not sinking into a pool of anxiety or fear or anger is to focus on all good things, especially faith. I know that when I notice myself starting to venture into places I don't want to be in, it has, and always has been, my faith in God that has saved me. Even with losing my girls, I knew that He was my number 1 defense against depression and anger. In return for my faith, He has granted me the grace to accept His will and not question His reason for taking my girls back. I have said this then and I say it again now: I have not had the urge to ask God why.

And you know what? This faith, the one that has kept me afloat, the one that has given me strength, is the one that I know will veer me away from anger or resentment, lead me to my heart's desires, carry me through, and let my brain rest once again.

in waiting

It is 6:45 a.m. and I am sitting on a chair next to an empty hospital bed. The room is bright, with three beds, each separated by a heavy curtain. We arrived at the Torrance office of PRC at about 6:20 and my brave husband is already currently having his procedure done -- a procedure that most men don't even want to think about -- in an operating room whose door I can only halfway see from my vantage point. I hear blips of his conversation with Dr. Rajfer, his urologist, during the procedure and things sound fairly . . . um . . . jolly in there. 


It is not ten minutes that a nurse, Kim, asks me to put on my own set of hospital garments -- a gown, a mesh hairnet, hospital issue socks, and mesh protectors on the socks. I get myself situated on my own bed, and in moments, Dr. Rajfer comes out of the operating room with a big smile on his face. I ask how it went and he said that it was successful. He had to make four pokes to get the most populated batch, but he got them, and a lot of them. J comes out of the room a few moments later, shimmying back to his bed while holding the back of his gown shut. It is straight-out-of-a-movie hilarious. 


I put my phone down from blogging {yes, I have resorted to mobile blogging! Thank you, Blogger for iPhone!} as Kim takes my vitals and asks me to sign some consent forms. I am unable to get back to writing as it does not take long until Dr. Hung {yes, his name is Hung}, the anesthesiologist, goes over some final items with me prior to surgery. My IV of fluids gets hooked up and soon, they lead me to the same operating room J was just in and instruct me to lay in bed. I am not on the bed for 30 seconds and I already start to feel heavy. I asked Dr. Hung if he already started to administer the meds and he replies with a perky, "of course!" I make an honest attempt at continuing a conversation with him and Kim but just continued to fade, fade, fade . . . 


After what seems like only a few short moments, I am slowly being awaked by the pfft pfft pfft of the blood pressure machine on my arm. Much like I was before being put out, I make attempts at conversation with Kim and J, who was already dressed and sitting next to my bed. 


TWELVE eggs, they say. TWELVE! That is one more than last year's eleven. Truly, we are a family of overachievers. I hear parts of statements as I come in and out of consciousness . . . the procedure went well . . . wow, that's a lot of eggs . . . some people get only four . . .


As has become almost customary each time I've had a procedure (i.e. last year's hysteroscopies and egg retrieval), I fight the grogginess, feign total coherence so we can skidaddle out of there and I can eat. They had had me fasting since last night and J and I are getting cranky-hungry. 


Finally, at about 10:00 a.m., we left. The normally not-so-long drive home from Torrance to Ladera Ranch seemed to take hours, despite the absence of any traffic {a surprise, for the 405 freeway}. By the time we get home, I am exhausted from not only the lingering effects of the anesthesia, but from trying to stay awake and not allow my head to bob like a drunken prom queen during the drive home.


As soon as we got home, I dragged my heavy behind up the stairs and slept. 
And slept.
And slept.
By the time I woke up, it was 4:35 p.m.


Now we are waiting to hear results of the fertilization. We should be getting a call tomorrow to let us know how it has gone so far. They are planning on having my embryo transfer on Saturday morning at 7:00 a.m.


Sometimes I have to pinch myself because of how quickly time has gone since everything happened. As much as it has been so exciting to move forward, my heart especially aches more for the girls who were supposed to be here with us anyway. Aubrey and Finley are so sorely missed in our home, but I have to be honest in saying that I get scared sometimes that they may be getting forgotten. So my message to them, to the universe, and to anyone who may be reading: they are not forgotten at all. Their Daddy and I ache and long for them everyday, but are thankful for their presence that we feel. It is through them that our faith is strengthened and we are provided an anchor of hope for their sister to be here in a few months. 

it hasn't been so fun this week.

J has noted that every few months, I get into this rut.
And it seems that this particular week is my rut week.
I'm exhausted and restless and getting signs of a bad ear infection.


To make matters worse, I received news that the dreaded M wants to come and visit the office to show off her baby.
My reaction: WHY????
Honestly, NO ONE in our office likes her all that much.
In our private conversations, those in the office who had known her have implicitly expressed to me that they have NO interest in seeing her. They minced no words in saying that they don't even care for her.
But she is coming.
And I know I paint myself a total BITCH for getting hurt and angry and feeling betrayed.
WHY is she coming??
I was told early that she was coming as a "consideration", as a "courtesy".


Even our bosses have told me that especially since we are such a small office, we are like a family.
And in so many ways, we truly are.
But in this situation, I don't feel like that at all.
In fact, I feel like the red-headed stepchild.
I keep trying to convince myself that I'm being ridiculous, that I can just brush this whole thing off, but here's the big news: THIS IS REAL LIFE. This isn't a joke or a menial thing. My reality is that I wake up 
every.
single.
day.
not having the baby girls we have dreamt about in our arms.


And the biggest aggressor to that pain is invited openly to a place that I am at every day? How is this okay? I don't understand why we are allowing her back into our lives. Just to see a baby? There are a MILLION babies out there for us to see, let alone babies whose mothers we actually care to see as well. Why this one?
If we are a family, then the office is like our home. Why would you invite an adversary to your home? Or your child's bully? Or your obnoxious neighbor?
This girl had terrorized my life for three long years by her mere presence.
On top of that, all those weeks I spent listening to her shove in my face the fact that I wasn't pregnant when she got knocked up by her husband who could care less about her . . . and of course the weeks after we lost the girls, when M would parade herself and her pregnancy stories around me. 


No, no, it wasn't just because she was pregnant and walking in front of me. It was to the extent of leaving for the day, then walking back in with two very LARGE centerpieces from her baby shower just to show me.


Or opening our boss's baby shower present IN MY OFFICE {when our boss gave her the present at her own desk}... {"Oh I'm going to open it in Angie's office to show her!"}


Insensitive, tactless, zero social graces, or just downright stupid... I do not want to associate myself with any of those adjectives, let alone the person who carries them. Winners surround themselves with winners; losers surround themselves with losers. The same applies for those descriptions.


So I ask again, why is it ok for her to come and visit? This is just like telling me to leave my own home so that my husband's ex-wife can come over. How does this make sense?


I am angry, tired, and have a headache from all the tears I have shed from this.
J has told me that the only cure for this rut is sleep... and tomorrow, we start a new day.


Thank you, everyone, for keeping us in your prayers.

no escape.

There is no escape.


They're everywhere.


As much as I know it's a reality, and I know that there is no avoiding it, I see it all the time and I find myself seething in . . . I don't even know. I just know I'm seething.


It's like a cruel joke. I have gone through this loss and I get it, when it happens to you, suddenly, you're seeing everything that hurts.


Today, I went to the store and saw FOUR (count them: FOUR) pregnant women right when I came in. I mean, really?

I get home and had a package waiting for me at the door. I had a fleeting moment of "You Got Mail" excitement, until I opened it up and it turned out to be a marketing packet. {they probably got my name from some public list} And it was the WORST marketing packet it could be:

And it's not as if it was sent to everyone on the block. I was singled out as a "pregnant" person. They meant to send it to me.

Yep, a sample tub of formula. I thought to myself, Could it get any worse?

Fate's answer: Why yes, it could... I opened up my email box to find this:

Three different emails of kid-related stuff.

On Facebook, it seems that all my friends are either pregnant, have new babies, or already have babies. 

I get it. I'm surrounded by it. Can't get away from it. The best thing I can do is just grin and bear it. I wake up everyday and go to bed every night. Each day is one step closer to the next phase of our lives.

What is something YOU try to escape from but can't?

A Letter to My Baby Girls

My Dearest Aubrey & Finley,

Two and a half short months have passed since we lost you.

Short as the time may have been since those fateful two days, I feel like the minutes and days have dragged on.

These past twelve weeks have seemed to last twelve years

even though it seems we have not moved on.

There's a small part of me that's still in disbelief that this has happened.

{ok, ok, it's a huge part of me}

I still get those surreal moments where I think,

"Did this thing really happen to me?"

"You mean there really is nothing we can do to get them back?

I've played it out in my head so many times:

Even if I know it couldn't have been detected or saved or have been stopped...

What if I had some sort of premonition at 13 or 14 weeks that there could be something wrong?

{In all my hours of wondering, I have actually been able to peg what I did on every single weekend of my pregnancy}

That weekend of my first prenatal facial, or that weekend I went to prenatal yoga, what if there was some way I had known?

And at that same moment, I somehow snap out of my fantasy

and am thrust back into this lonely world

and I'm back into my world without you.

Our time together, though short, was nothing short of magic.

There was so much fun and excitement from the moment your Daddy took me home from the doctor's office after our embryo transfer.

Despite how stubborn I was in wanting to get up or wash my hair or sneak downstairs, Daddy was so strict with me and wanted to make sure we followed all the rules to a T.

Everytime I went potty during those five long days of bedrest, I remember rubbing my {obviously} still very flat tummy, telling you girls to stay inside, already telling you how much we want you, how much Mommy and Daddy love you.

That weekend before the official tests from the doctor's, I cheated and took home pregnancy tests and there was so much excitement and nervousness in our home.

Daddy patiently bought me pregnancy test after pregnancy test to pacify my need to always be ahead of the game, to always be in control.

And then that day came. We got our phone call from June at PRC to tell us that all our hard work paid off, all our prayers were answered: we were pregnant. And even though we didn't know how many babies we had, we knew that God blessed us with being able to create LIFE.

Two and a half long weeks later was the culmination of it all: Dr. Salem told us we had two baby girls. 

My dream.

I was going to be a Mommy.

A Mommy to not just one, but TWO baby girls,

two girls that are solely mine and your Daddy's.

I was going to be your Mommy.

The first few weeks of my pregnancy were hard. I was so sick that I stopped eating. Daddy got so worried and frustrated with me because he didn't know when I would eat, let alone what to feed me. We trudged through daily hormone injections up until 12 weeks without complaint. We powered through it because this was what we wanted. YOU were who we wanted.

The magic turned more real when I started to feel you inside me. As soon as the doctors were able to label who was Baby A and Baby B, we knew who was who.

Finley, our little firecracker, you always were the wild one. Because of your position in my belly, I always knew it was you who started the middle-of-the-night dance parties. You'd start stirring and before you knew it, your sister would wake up and you two would keep me up half the night -- and even if I suffered with exhaustion at work the next morning, I relished in those moments of feeling the two of you play at 3am. I felt like it was our playtime, our secret fun time together when Daddy was snoring next to us.

Aubrey, our deceivingly calm baby, you were the "quieter" one of my two girls. Even during the ultrasounds we had, you would "wave" at the ultrasound wand and dance around when it was focused on you, while your crazy sister did somersaults, as if begging for attention. But between the two of you, you were the one who would "speak up" to Mommy when I didn't eat. Like clockwork, when we got a little too hungry, you always pinched the bottom corner of my belly, as if to tell me that I need to feed you two. Whenever we seemed to talk about Finley too much, you'd push so hard on my belly that it would almost hurt, and I'd have to rub it out to make you calm down. Daddy always said it was you demanding recognition.

And then one day, with almost no warning, we were told we had to start saying our goodbyes. I remember that night in the hospital, feeling the two of you trying to do one of your dance parties, knowing my little babes were perfect and healthy, but the pregnancy itself would not allow you to go on. I tried to talk to you and tell you it was going to be okay, but I found that I couldn't tell you something that I wasn't even sure  to be true. That entire night, in my head, in my heart, I argued with both emotion and logic. How could this happen? How could my pregnancy be in danger, when I felt my perfect little peas in my belly like nothing is going on?

It made no sense to me then, and it still makes no sense to me now. Somehow, no matter how much consoling and counseling anyone tells me, this super irrational and unbelievable situation still happened to me. At the end of the day, no matter how much reasoning I try to do, the truth and reality remains: My little girls are gone. Like, forever. 

I try to imagine what you would have been like.

Would your personalities have been as true as we had pegged?

Would we have had a ballerina and a soccer star? An artist and a scientist perhaps?

Would you have fought over headbands, whose turn it was to do dishes, or {heaven forbid} boyfriends?

And somehow more painfully, I close my eyes and dream of what you would have looked like growing up.

We already know after seeing you that Aubrey looked like me and Finley looked like Daddy...

but what color would your eyes have been? What color hair would you have had?

I know that everyday, for the rest of my life, I will have this wonder and unanswered questions and sadly, unfulfilled prayers.

More importantly, I know that everyday, for the rest of my life, I will have your memory to hold... of the two little girls who, in such a short time, changed their Daddy's life and mine in ways no other person ever could. Everyday and every night, I will dream of what could have been with my two girls and our lives together. And when I close my eyes to dream at night, I will always have a 3am playdate with you.

All my love

forever and ever,

your Mommy

Tonight I Want to Cry

Tonight, as I reached over to turn off the lamp on my nightstand, I started to cry.


I told myself I wouldn't
and I could fight the tears
and I promised myself I wouldn't lose it
and I broke that promise. 
It was all in vain, once I thought of how close we would have been to everything at this point -- my last day of work, my baby shower, and the girls' due date.
And then, I told J that I was missing the girls a lot tonight and the tears just streamed down my face and onto my pillow.


I asked John to take down the girls' memory box, which is safely tucked away at the top of our closet. He asked if I was sure and I said yes, that I just needed to see the girls tonight. He gave in and as tired as he was, sat on his side of the bed as I carefully opened the box within the box we made -- it was the memory box that the hospital made us for our girls.


I'd seen this box several times before and I have gone through their contents so many times, but each time seems like it is the first.


The first thing I see in there:
Footprints.
They are so tiny, barely as big as my thumb.
I read some of measurements that the nurses wrote on there.
"Baby A" {Aubrey} was 7.8 ounces
"Baby B" {Finley} was 10.4 ounces


Through teary eyes, I joked with John that Finley was our little fatty... obv, she ate more. My feigned joking didn't last long, as I reached the bottom of the box to the last item... the one picture of my babies. Each time I look at that picture, my knowledge that they were, in fact, pretty babies {thank goodness!}, is reaffirmed.


After some reasoning with J {who kindly and yet so stubbornly insisted for me to stay with him in the room}, I took the box into the other room, the one we had originally already cleaned out to be turned into the nursery, 


and I sobbed.


There is still a large part of me that doesn't really believe the girls are gone, that the life we had begun to plan for ourselves and for our babies had dissipated in front of our eyes. The memory of my girls inside my belly, fluttering around, pinching me, doing somersaults, is still so fresh that this whole "them being gone" thing just seems so surreal.


I sobbed for a few minutes, held their memory box tightly, and slowly walked back to our bedroom.


And sometimes, a few moments like that is something I just need to do.


More to come . . . 

You Would Think

This is my first original post back on Blogger in a long time -- since the pregnancy and the loss of my girls. {The past several entries have been transfers from my Tumblr Blog.}

When people ask how I'm doing, my answers have become standard.

I'm okay.

I'm alright.

I'm hanging in.

But I'm lying.

I am not one of those three. In fact, I am hurting and broken and blindly searching for the pieces of my life and my heart that seem to have shattered into a million different pieces.

You would think I should be okay

but my days have been long and arduous.

I work incredibly hard to smile. I've noticed that the smiles I share these days are no longer the same warm and soft ones that I used to have before and especially during the pregnancy. Now I feel like the smiles I give are stiff, contrived, and almost comical in their emptiness. 

Laughter is feigned. Sunshine has been clouded. Days have been bleak.

You would think I should be alright

but I see the gold box that my daughters' ashes are in and I do nothing but long for what I've lost with them...

The rest of the four months of carrying them, the company of my little babies, and the constancy of their movements

The havoc of raising two infants -- middle-of-the-night feedings, diaper duty, messy feedings -- times two.

The harrowing task of chasing after toddlers, children, adolescents, and {shudder} teenagers.

All times two. Simultaneously.

And somehow, as daunting as the thought may have been, John and I felt so ready. We were so prepared for our girls and we so want{ed} them more than anything.

And you would think I should be hanging in.

Have you ever thought about that term, "hanging in"?

Sounds nonchalant, like you're just chilling out.

But I am the furthest from that. 

I'm more like

hanging by a thread.

I have worked very hard to smile and play the role of a person who is strong, a person who is "moving on". 

But what I've learned is that I'm allowed to be sad, to grieve, to miss my girls. 

{source: Etiquette for a Lady on Tumblr}

I'm so afraid to smile or laugh, or show any sign of being "happy" {happy in quotation marks, of course} because I'm afraid I shouldn't be. I'm so afraid that in doing so, it's like we're moving on and forgetting Aubrey & Finley. I don't ever want my girls to be forgotten. Not by me, not by John, our families, or by anyone.

Despite it all, I promise to try very hard

to smile

to laugh

to bring a little sunshine 

Because in doing so, that is how we remember my two little sunshines.

Prayers.

Originally posted on my Tumblr Blog on Apr 11, 2011 10:09am

Today, Monday, April 11, 2011, our Aubrey & Finley's bodies are scheduled to be cremated.

We ask that our friends and family please say collective prayers, especially today, for our girls. We love them and miss them more than we can ever say.

Thank you so much.

All our love,

The Bench Family

John & Angela

and our sweet angels Aubrey Faith & Finley Grace

Home

Originally posted on my Tumblr Blog on Apr 13, 2011 4:29pm

our girls are now home with their mommy and daddy.

Always

Originally posted on my Tumblr Blog on Apr 8, 2011 11:29pm

for my daughters . . . 

past, present, and future . . .

Always

by Switchfoot

this is the start

this is your heart

this is the day you were born

this is the sun

these are your lungs

this is the day you were born

and I am always, always, always yours

these are the scars

deep in your heart

this is the place you were born

this is the hole

where most of your soul comes ripping out

from the places you've been torn

and it is always, always, always yours

but i am always, always, always yours

hallelujah

i'm caving in

hallelujah

i'm in love again

hallelujah

i'm a wretched man

hallelujah

every breath is a second chance

and it is always, always, always yours

and i am always, always, always yours