Three years...

Roughly five hours from now, at 2:25 am, will mark three years since my Morgan entered and left this world.  I've been dreading this week since the beginning of the month.  The first year, I was miserable.  Nashville is just cold enough to spawn a wave of fall time babies.  July 2013, everyone except me, it seemed, was pregnant.  July 2014, it was my turn, and close enough to our due date to be optimistic.  This year, I'm not pregnant (and not wanting to be, right now), and baby Avery keeps me too busy to mope and mourn.

It's an interesting place, parenting after a loss.  How to parent the living child? The only child who's not an only child.  The child who allowed me to smile a true smile for the first time in two years.  How to parent the child who does not get to play with her baby sister, show her how to be a big girl, and blame her for so much mischief?  How to preserve her memory when no one else does?  When I purposefully suppress it to fully enjoy the days with baby sister?

As we've done the last two years, we'll celebrate Morgan's day with a birthday treat.  This year, it will be a homemade cookie cake.  With work, and the every day routine, there won't be a lot of time to truly focus on Morgan's memory, and that, by itself, makes me sad.