“Birth is the Beginning and Death is the Destination” My Journey: The Series, September

There is a poem, birth is the beginning. When I was young I knew I wanted a baby girl. I wanted a daughter to carry on the memories that I had with my mother who I called Mommy. My Mommy, Barbara was a unique individual, at times she was fun and other times reactive (that’s another story). My Mommy was both born in September and died in September. I wished for something happy in September. My beautiful baby girl was a planned baby girl born September 3, 1998. 

So, when I was thirty-three, I was pregnant with her. I was five months pregnant when I got put on bed rest for low amniotic fluid. It was the Friday of Memorial Weekend, my doctor said I needed to be on bed rest until the baby was born. That was a long and hot summer to say the least. I was supposed to lay on my side, most of the time. What side I don’t remember. Erik (my husband) was trying to complete a recorded video from a book he had written and was gone every Saturday and Sunday as he worked his salaried position during the week. He would pick up my five movies from the BlockBuster down the street that I had ordered, and he made sure I had enough Kraft macaroni and cheese. 

When my Birthday came in June, I asked the doctor if I could at least celebrate my Birthday. He said yes, but to keep it low key. Erik and I went to Bill Knapps so I could have my cake and eat it too. So here are my thoughts. My Mommy died when she was thirty-three a couple of weeks before her thirty-fourth Birthday. I kept thinking here I am pregnant and starting a family, and hers had ended already. It was such an emotional Birthday. To me when someone dies, they never have “heavenly Birthdays as most people like to say. To me they are not celebrating another year lived. It’s just the day they were born. My Mommy will forever be thirty-three even though she has been gone forty-four and a half years. So she would be seventy-eight today. How can the be that I have outlived her twenty- three years. 

Next line of the poem is life is journey and what journey it has been. So my journey is to follow.