Memories

I made the mistake of watching Private Practice tonight.  I love the show.  Problem is that the entire episode tonight was about a funeral.  Really.  And although it's fiction, they were reminiscing the entire episode about the dead character (I won't name who it is in case anyone reading this wants to watch the show).  It made me start thinking about the memories I have of my boys.

I hate that the only images that play across my mind of my boys are them dying.  Every time I think of Andrew, I remember watching the doctors and nurses trying to resuscitate him.  I think of holding him for the first time, trying to memorize his face and every inch of his tiny, lifeless body.  When I think of Sam, I think of the last day, backing away from his bed as I watched the same scene unfold.  Even though they resuscitated him, it wasn't the same.  And I start thinking about holding him and watching him stop breathing...the NP coming over and checking for his heart beat three times before his heart stopped.  About cuddling his lifeless body as it got cold and wishing with all my might that this nightmare wasn't happening.  What kinds of memories are those?  Shouldn't I remember the good things?  Good things are what I should be reminiscing, not the end of their lives.

The hard part is that the only time I got to see them without all the damn tubes in their mouths and all the IVs was after they stopped breathing.  I want to remember my babies not in a hospital.  Not in those stupid isolettes.  With nothing sticking in them.  I want to remember them as happy little boys.  I'm so angry that I will never have that opportunity.  Their entire lives were spent in that damn hospital.  I never got to bring them home.  It's so unfair.  Why couldn't I have had two healthy beautiful boys?  Why did they have to be so sick? 

I want to remember them running and playing with Penny.  I want to remember them pulling on the cats' tails.  I want all those things for them and there's nothing I can do to make that happen.  I'm so angry that I never got to bring them home.  That I never got to cuddle their warm little bodies with nothing stuck in them.  I just want happy, good memories of my babies that will never come...it makes me so mad at the world.  It makes me mad at myself for not being able to keep them safely in my belly for another month.  I should be 28.5 weeks pregnant right now and instead I'm recovering from major abdominal surgery with nothing to show for it.  I just want them back.  I just want to make good, happy memories with my boys.  Just one day.  One day with a happy memory of them so that I have something good to hold onto.  I love them so much.