What If?

So many times I write about how my kids are driving me crazy. Sometimes as I try to write my posts, complete a task, complete a thought even, I am short with my kids. I shoo them off to watch television or play outside, so that I can have just a few more minutes to finish what I am doing. But on Wedesday morning I realized yet again, that there are only so many minutes given to each of us. And the scariest part is that none of us know how many minutes we have.

Madeline Alice Spohr was 17 months old when she died on April 7th. She was the beautiful spirited daughter of a fellow blogger. In my heart of hearts I want to write something beautiful and profound and wise. I want to write words that will move you to the tears that you rightfully should shed for this little angel. I want to put down words that will inspire you to run, not walk, to your children and hug and hold them as tight as you can. I want you to finish reading this, turn off your computer, and go play catch with your child, or bake cookies with your child, or do one of the millions of things that they've probably been bugging you to do with them, but you have been too tired, too busy, too something to do. I want all of these things so bad. But most of all, I want to climb under my covers, curl up in a little sobbing, weeping ball, and bawl my eyes out. Because I am a mother. And who better to feel the pain of a mother who has lost her child, than another mother. A mother who has dared to imagine what it would be like to lose a child. A mother who has thanked God again and again, with shame and guilt in her heart, that it was not my child.

I don't think I can find it in myself to write those kind of words. Not today. Not right now. Right now I am going to turn off my computer and go play with my kids before they go to grandmas for the weekend. I am going to look at them and marvel at the wonders that they are. I am going to swallow my tears and squelch my sobs and pretend that my heart doesn't feel like it might explode at the very question of what if? What if that would have been my child?