Did I Get Enough of What I Want?

Another blogger wrote a post about the Womens Conference, and in particular the conversation titled, "Grief, Healing, and Resistance." This session brought this question to me. "Did I Get Enough of What I Want?" One of the panelists, Elizabeth Edwards describes a statement she made after seeing her son in the morgue, and telling a friend that she was so glad that she had her son for 16 years. And she continued to explain how she came to see that as a gift.

It was not as long as I wanted, but, you know often times you don't get all that you want, but if you get some of what you want, isn't that great? And I look at it now as a gift.

The tears come because I too see Caitlin's brief life as a gift. And I didn't get enough of what I wanted--I wanted to bring her home from the hospital and continue parenting. I try to transform her life as a gift, only the desire to parent a living child is becoming stronger rather than receding as that transformation continues from debilitating grief to transformed pain of loss to gratefulness for the gift of motherhood she gave me. The question will linger, however, and I wonder how DH and I can resolve it. If we have the courage and means to resolve it. I fear that, well actually, I'm resigned to having some of what I want, rather than having my desire for parenting a living child fulfilled. I'll be OK. I always am somehow--and that's a gift or a curse, to live with getting a taste of what I want, though rarely (except on the day DH asked me to marry him) getting enough of what I need. You know, it's that I am loved enough----but have not found the ways to love enough-------

Perhaps the conversation might bring a question to you. Here's the link.