Page 153 of Heartbreak & Cupcakes
ALEX
I laid beside Sadie,watching her as she slept. She looked so peaceful. So calm. So perfect. My eyes traveled down to the tiny bump that was just starting to show. Last week we’d had our twelve-week checkup and we were officially in the safe zone.
I turned over and saw that it was almost three in the morning. I hadn’t slept a wink and figured it was a lost cause now. I slid out from under the covers and quietly walked out of the room. On the way to my office, I checked in on Lexi who was sound asleep with the glowing stars above her head. Eeyore, who was asleep beside her lifted his head, but when he saw there was no need for alarm, settled back down with a sigh.
Sadie had moved back into the condo after her dad left. He’d stayed for a week before heading back home. She didn’t know this, but he was only going home to get his house ready to put on the market. He was retiring and would be moving out to California. He said he wanted to surprise her, but really, I think he just didn’t want her to try and talk him out of it.
I knew that she’d be over-the-moon. She worried about him being so far away.
As I continued down to the hall my palms dampened and my pulse quickened as I got closer to the cause of my sleepless night. I’d sent Tyson over to the storage to get some baby things and he’d accidentally grabbed one of the boxes I’d never seen before that was filled with the stuff Maddox and Nick had packed up from the apartment south of Market.
When I opened it before dinner, I’d found a pregnancy journal that Ash had kept when she was pregnant with Lexi. I’d opened it last night but seeing her penmanship again after all this time had hit me like a punch in the gut. I’d shut the book immediately and put it back in the box.
I hadn’t told Lexi or Sadie about my discovery. This was something I needed to do alone. I retrieved the book, then lowered down in my chair and opened it. I noticed my hand was shaking as I sat in my office staring down at pages filled with Ash’s writing. It was strange seeing her penmanship again after all this time.
I remembered seeing her write in this book during her pregnancy, but I’d never read the contents. As I flipped through the pages, I saw that there were prompts such as your greatest wish, fear, dreams, hopes for your unborn child.
I flipped to the last two entries dated the day before and the day of Ash and AJ’s accident and Lexi’s birth.
My greatest wish:
Wow. That’s a hard question to answer. My first thought was that my greatest wish for you is that you will live fearlessly, and never accept less than what you deserve. Life is hard, Nugget. I know that your daddy wants to protect you and me and AJ from all the pain that life has, but what he doesn’t realize is, that is life. Pain is beautiful. Struggle helps you grow.
I don’t want to protect you. I want to empower you to deal with this painful, hard, beautiful world. I want you to be able to face anything that comes your way with grace, humility, and strength.
As I sit here writing, I realize that I don’t know what my mother or father’swish was for me. I never knew my parents and neither did your daddy. But our story isn’t yours. You will never be abandoned. My greatest wish for you has already been fulfilled. You are loved. You are cherished. You are wanted.
My greatest fear:
I’ve been putting off this entry for weeks, months even. Because every time I sit down to write it, I start writing that my greatest fear would be not seeing this life growing inside of me grow up, graduate from college, get married, start a family of her own. The truth is, I have a feeling that I won’t…My intuition has never been wrong, and to be honest, I’ve been angry, and in denial over this feeling that I’ve been having that my time here is nearly over.
I hope that we will sit together and read this when you are older and laugh at how crazy and kooky I was, that I thought I wouldn’t be around…but if not, I want to say this.
Everything is going to be okay no matter what the future holds.
Your daddy went to work this morning and kissed my belly before he left. It’s something he’s done every day since he found out you were growing inside of me. This morning, unlike any other morning, when he did a peace washed over me and I had a sudden sense of clarity. The life growing inside of me is strong. You will be fine with or without me because you have your dad.
Your daddy thinks that I’m the rock of this family. He thinks that I’m the glue that holds him together. But the truth is, he is all of those things. His love is my safe place, my security, my home. And I know that no matter what, he will love and take care of our children.
I’m going to cheat a little and include my answer for tomorrow’s prompt (yes the book said not to look ahead but I’m a rule breaker and I hope that you are too!) Tomorrow’s prompt asks me what my greatest hope is. Well, Nugget, my greatest hope is not for you. I know that with him in your life, all of your hopes and dreams will be within your reach. He’ll make sure of that. My hope is for your dad.
One day, if I’m not around, my hope is that he will be loved the way that he has always made me feel loved.
I pray that he will show you and your brother that love isn’t finite, it’s infinite. I know that he won’t love again easily, but if I have anything to do with it, I’ll send someone his way that he won’t be able not to love. Because the thought of him going through this world and never feeling what he’s made me feel, is my greatest fear.
Chills ran up and down my arm as I stared down at the book.
How did she know?
And why was I still surprised that she had?
I wiped the tears that had been falling down my face. I took a deep breath, for the first time accepting that I was never going to see Ashley or AJ again. They were gone, but my love for them never would be. It was infinite, not finite.
They didn’t have to be on this earth for me to love them.
My chest was on fire as I tried to take a breath and a single tear drop fell down my cheek.
Ash had been right when she’d written that I wanted to protect Lexi and everyone from all the pain in the world. But she’d also been right that this world was filled with pain. It was hard. It was also beautiful.
Death and life and everything in between were not things that I could control. I couldn’t protect the people I loved from pain. All I could do was show up for them, every day. All I could do was be a soft place for them to land when times were hard. All I could do was love them.
And that’s exactly what I was going to do.
My heart would always be broken; until my last breath I would love and miss Ash and AJ. But like Ash said, love isn’t finite, it’s infinite. And the love I felt for them was still alive. It was in Lexi and Sadie and the baby growing inside of Sadie.
They lived on through my love.
