Aynslee a.k.a. Ava's baby siser

Ava wearing her "big sister" shirt. (I put on the shirt...she dressed the rest). 

Ava kissing her "baby siser"!

Jim & I talked about the mixed feelings that went with Aynslee not knowing Ava. She was not here when Ava was here. Ava very much loved her baby sister, anticipated her arrival, singing "I'm gonna be a big siser", wanting to sleep beside my tummy...ON my tummy so that she could be close to Aynslee. Did Ava know that week? Is that why she wanted to sleep so close to her baby sister? Did she know in a few short days, her daddy and I would lay in a bed with her as she went to Heaven...with her baby sister in my tummy kicking and hugging her from inside my belly? Did. She. Know??? They had not gotten the chance to learn about one another, to play dolls, to fight, to share secrets.  It broke our heart to know those things could never be, BUT she wouldn't have to grow up with the missing that Jim and I felt...or would she? 

I have some vague notion that one day, when Aynslee is possibly nine, or twelve, she would come to me and say “So, Mom.  This Ava person?  Tell me about her.”  And I would sit down and tell her about a sister she had...sweet big sister Ava. I’d  show her the special things. Perhaps open those creaky chester drawers and pull out some faded dresses, her shoes, some old pictures. And how, against all I believed possible, we survived losing her.  Maybe she’d sit quietly and absorb and feel a pain of missing she may not have had before. I don’t really know but the hazy reel played something like that.

It still scares me.  I don’t want Aynslee to miss Ava...bad...like we do. I don’t want a day where she cries, I mean really cries, for the yearning of her big sister.  I don’t want to have to explain where she went, and why. I don’t even know why.   I feel so guilty that she will grow up with even a little bit of the wishing and wondering that we carry.  I see her alone and it makes my heart hurt.  To look at her, to see how very, very much she resembles Ava, to imagine two of them – so similar – side by side.  My heart hurts all over again.  To think of my own life, growing up with a constant playmate, a confidant, almost a part of my self, called sister...my best friend...

There is a place in my grief that belongs to Aynslee alone, and some days it’s just so much bigger than the rest.