Oliver and I returned from a lovely vacation in Croatia. My entire family finally got to meet our child and he was terrific!
During our holidays in Croatia, my mother wanted to bring Oliver to the church were she once brought me as a young child,
The Church of Our Lady of Trsat.
My mother began by saying how special the church is (and it is…the history alone is enough to make it special) and when she brought me to Trsat for the first time – she had me blessed and she wants Oliver to be blessed too.
I never really concentrated on how blessed or not blessed I was throughout my life. Even when the most fabulous things happened to me…my first pregnancy, my first child…I don’t think god nor did being blessed entered my mind. I just thought – “boy, I must be really lucky”. And we were…even for a brief moment.
My entire life, I assumed if you were blessed it meant that your life was very fortunate. That you are healthy and only good things surrounded you at all times. By this definition – I’m not sure I am or not.
I have repeatedly blogged about how lucky we are having such great friends and family. And how extremely lucky we are to finally have birthed a healthy child who is pretty much perfect in every way. We never had to struggle financially and always had good food to eat. We are committed to this marriage and both share similar goals that preserve this little family of ours. Apart from having a dead child – I would say this could be considered blessed, no? But unfortunately the dead daughter part is so overwhelming that sometimes it’s a bit blurry to see all the good things in our lives. A lot of the time, I don’t feel so blessed. Sometimes I feel, if there is a god, maybe he just made a mistake the night Amelie died? Or maybe we just weren’t as blessed?
Blessed or not – I’ve learned that life takes no prisoners – we are all subject to good and bad things happening to us. Some people have lives that go smoother than others. And some people just aren’t as lucky. We are somewhere in between. Living a good life, raising a lovely son, healthy and for the most part happy and enriched with good friends and family - all without our daughter.
