Closure

This Wednesday was Noah's birthday. He would have been 2 years old. Last year on that day Brian took the day off and we escaped to San Juan Capistrano. This year however, there was one crucial difference; we now have Emmaline. We knew the day was coming but didn't feel the need to escape. Instead I took Emmaline to her well baby check up. It seemed a fitting thing to do somehow. I still thought about Noah that day, and continue to do so as I remember those 9 days he spent with us, but something is missing from my memories now. The ache is gone. I looked around my house filled with evidence of a child living there, at the full nursery, at my healthy and growing little girl, and I was quite at peace. I found myself actually feeling guilty that I wasn't more sad. It wasn't that I didn't still miss my son, but the sting of his loss had diminished. I realized the longing had been satisfied, the emptiness finally filled. I had closure.
Having Emmaline doesn't replace the babies we lost, but she is the blessing we received after almost 5 years of pain and loss, prayer and struggle in the hope that one day God would still make us a family. Emmaline's arrival is the end of a long drawn out chapter in our lives; but her life is the start of a new one.
Life moves on, and with it the grief, till only the memories remain.