Project Heal: Capture Your Grief: Secondary Losses

In an effort to ease my hurting heart this Fall, I am participating in Project Heal: Capture Your Grief . It's a photography/storytelling project to honor the babies we've lost.

Day 17: Secondary Losses

I think, when we lose our baby or child, we lose so much in addition to that initial heartwrenching loss. We lose our innocence. We lose every semblance of who we were before that loss. We lose our child, over and over and over.
We lose him or her in that moment. We lose them every moment thereafter.
When I lost Riley Grace, I didn't just lose that tiny baby. I lost the one year old, the two year old, the ten year old I would have now.
A few months ago, I bought Ella this dollhouse, for a fantastic deal. It's mostly been an outdoor toy, I'll have to clean it up of grass clippings, etc. before I bring it inside. This  morning, after I read my Bible on my front porch, I looked at it and thought "Riley will never play with this awesome toy."
I remember, when Ella was two, we lived near a CVS store. Ella and I would go there and buy 99 cent nail polish and give ourselves crazy manicures on the weekends. We befriended a cashier, and one day, she said, "You know, you're such a good Mommy, it's a pity you don't have another girl."
And I thought "I do...but she'll never get to do this with me."
As loss parents, I think we sometimes keep a morbid list of things that our child will never get to do. The fun "to do" list for that child is yet another secondary loss.