Flowers on the wall: a trip down memory lane

I love being a Mom, but I also love being an aunt, and I became an aunt before I became a mother.  This week, I was privileged to welcome a new niece into the world, and I was able to go visit my sister and her husband in the hospital.  It was the same hospital where Gideon was delivered, and there were a few moments that hit me hard, and made me stop to breathe deeply so I could keep my emotions under control.

In some ways, it was really hard to go down the same halls.  The chapel at the hospital is called Hope Chapel, and as we walked past it, I remembered spending time there, hoping and praying and yearning first of all for my Gideon to miraculously recover, but second of all to have the faith and strength to handle whatever was to come. I spent time there drowning in an overwhelming whirlwind of feelings: confusion, worry, self doubt, and also hope and comfort.  I tried to sing hymns, and was so overcome that I couldn't, so I just read them and felt them and cried.  I knew when I was there that God heard my prayers, and felt comfort knowing that He had a plan for me.  In my experience, Hope Chapel is an appropriate name.

Until I visited my new niece, I had forgotten about the pictures of flowers on the walls in the labor and delivery and the maternity area.  I love gardening: to me planting seeds, bulbs, or small plants and watching them grow and produce fruits is a miracle.  I love spring flowers, especially flowers that come from bulbs.  (Tulips, daffodils, hyacinths, crocuses, allium, anemones...you name it.)  To me, spring flowers are significant: signifying new life and new birth.  Every room that I was in when I was at the hospital (I was in 3, plus the one my sister was in) had pictures of bulb type flowers on the wall.

It will help you understand this post, if you go back and read my post from last April about spring bulbs and flowers, where I quote my late sister-in-law's blog.  When she wrote it, she was being torn apart by cancer, and created an amazing post about how she realized her body was like a bulb that would one day be resurrected to a beautiful flower.  So to me, the spring flowers not only signify new life in the "newborn baby" sense of the word, but also in the "resurrection" sense.  Those pictures of flowers reminded me that if Gideon did not live, he'd be resurrected.  His body was under so much stress; due to the blockage from his kidneys to his bladder, his kidneys were HUGE and full of fluid and toxins that would normally be filtered out of his body.  They were damaged to a level of not being able to function, and his lungs were vastly underdeveloped because his kidneys had been taking up so much space in his body.  It would have taken a HUGE miracle for him to have lived any type of normal life....but that's just it.  The miracle didn't happen, but it will.  That's what the resurrection will do for Gideon, it will be the miracle that gives him a healthy body that can run and jump and play and cry out loud and pee.  The flowers on the wall were a reminder of that...and also that my sister in law on the other side would be with Gideon, along with many other loved ones who have left this mortal life ahead of me.

This time, I got to walk down the halls carrying my baby in an infant carrier, and I got to leave and take my baby with me, unlike last time, when I went home from the hospital with no baby.  Miri brings so much healing and comfort to my heart, she is a wonderful baby, and I treasure the moments I have with her so much more dearly now than I would have without experiencing the loss of a baby, but I still miss Gideon.  I want to know him and play with him, and I wish Miri could have known him as a big brother.  I treasure all my loved ones so dearly, and am much more grateful for the time I have to be with them. 

Remembering my time at the U of U hospital, I also remembered the overwhelming feelings of love and support that I felt.  Friends and family were praying for us, visiting us, cleaning for us, cooking for us, caring for our other children for us, and reaching out to us in countless other kind ways, and I just felt so loved.  When I visited my sister and her new baby, I wanted to share that love forward, to my new niece and to everyone around me.  Even though that hospital has many sad memories for me, it also holds tender, sweet memories and deep feelings, and it was a wonderful (and hard) experience to revisit them, and also to make new ones and share in a special time with my sister, her husband, and their newborn.