A Letter

Dear Teagan,

It was 18 years yesterday and you passed through our lives quietly. Although I am sad I never got to see the human you might have become, and I am content with how things are. You have taught me so much, and I thank you for that. I have a friend whose daughter is graduating from high school this year and it occurs to me that you would have been in the same grade and that pulls at my heart more than I expected it to. And I still am grateful for how things have turned out. But I want to thank you because your brief time in my life taught me so much both at the time, and in the 18 years since then:

• I can bear the unbearable. That I have strength beyond what I imagine.

• Life is full of dichotomies. I am sad that we never got to know you, but I am happy with how my life is. This prepared me for my brain injury in ways I couldn't have imagined. To know that I am both hard working and tired, happy and sad, all at the same time and that is acceptable.

• Sharing my story and in particular hard times openly brings me closer to people in unexpected ways.

• You taught be the value of sitting with someone in their grief rather than trying to help them through it faster. That sad is okay and has value.

• You taught me that I need to embrace the suck and ride it out. Grief comes in waves that hit you unexpectedly. Denying the sad just makes it worse, although it took me a long time to learn that.

• That meeting suffering with an open heart surely must be an act of grace. That knowing this when the unpleasant stuff happens I can smile a little bit knowing I am growing closer to that person I want to be.

• Sometimes what I have is exactly enough. I thought we needed you to complete our family, but our family was complete already. I think that for both of my children you might have made it harder. It might have always been his, hers, and ours. Not just ours, which is how it feels now.

• My big lesson in life is that my own attachments is what makes me miserable. Your father didn't grieve for you the same way I did, but he didn't have an attachment to you like I did. In his own words you didn't seem real until that first ultrasound, and by the end of that we knew that the out come wasn't what we expected. I couldn't let go of your story for a long time. And even now it is hard for me to say out loud that things turned out okay without you. That isn't what a "good mother" feels.

• I am glad that you didn't have to be here for my brain hemorrhage. You would have been going into grade 9, and that is a hard enough time as it is. I expect that much would have fallen onto your plate. I am glad that you didn't have to go through that.

I wish I could say that a day doesn't go by that I don't think about you, but that isn't true, and really I wouldn't want that anyway. But I've thought a lot about you this week. Thank you for all the hard lessons you brought my way. Without you I am a better person. And I mean that it the most love I can muster, a heart full of gratitude for you, and promise there is always a corner of me that misses never rocking you to sleep, bandaging your knee, or watching your heart get broken and seeing you fail, learn and grow. Discovering that you too are someone who bears the unbearable.

Because what a gift those lessons are in life.