Identification of My Murdered Baby

The Connecticut State police has graciously assigned a member of their force to be with us right now.

In a strange way, it’s comforting to keep the media at bay. In another way, I can’t keep from feeling how much more comforted I would have felt had they been at my child’s side when the shooting began.

Do ‘we’ really need protecting now? I guess so. I surely haven’t seen such a huge amount of media in any one place. Well, at least not in person. For some reason it doesn’t look so large on the television.

My husband encourages me to get dressed. He generously brings my tea to my room. I’m numb.

We have waited for the final word from the police. This is not something I want to hear. Because for some reason, right now, I get to fool myself into believing that this is just a dream. That this hasn’t happened and our daughter is really over at her grandparents visiting for the weekend.

I get to fool myself and my mind gets to fool me into thinking she’s at dance class, or with her aunts and uncles and cousin at some outing. I get to fool myself that she’s still playing down the hall with her dolls and laughing at the funny things she sees in books and on television.

And I know these last moments before I move into this very, very real world will be the last of what I considered a secure world for myself and my family. Something inside tells me it will be a very long time, if ever, when I will wake and feel genuine happiness again. A happiness I took for granted and didn’t even know it…until now.

And I don’t ever think it will be the full sense of happiness that I feel now, because nothing in my life or my husband’s life will ever be the same again. And I can’t seem to shake that thought. I can’t seem to shake the thought that for all time, at least on this earth, I will not see my daughter.

I will miss her smiling face. The one which jumped in bed with us on weekend mornings and who we snuggled with in between us.

I can’t get dressed yet. It feels like if I do, all these luscious thoughts as if my world is just the same as it was when I woke up on Friday, before all this happened, will somehow disappear. I may never get them back.

I want to move into the practical things that I know I must be doing. But I can’t. I just want to sit here forever because then maybe it won’t be real.

My husband needs me to be strong right now…for him and for me. I know this in my soul. I can’t find the way to do this. I can’t let him bear all the burden of the police and medical examiner.

“Get up,” I tell myself. “You can do this.”

I go to him, still in my satin robe. I need his embrace. I need his closeness. I myself feel so infantile right now.

He grabs me. He kisses me on the forehead. I can see he’s been crying. I’m not there for him. That hurts me. I need to be there for him too.

He looks in my eyes and tells me he’s identified her from a picture taken at the scene.

My heart sinks.

We sit together at the kitchen table.

We hold hands.

The tears stream down our faces in silence.

What can be said.

The bubble has burst. This is real now. Very real.

I sense there will be many more very real moments ahead and I don’t know if I’m prepared for them both emotionally and simply physically.

I tell myself I will take them one at a time. I have no choice.

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