What Love Looks Like

a moment of joy; a lifetime of grief

there'll be happiness after you
but there was happiness because of you
both of these things can be true
there is happiness

-t.s.

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This weekend, I developed the film that we took at the hospital and found the last photo of Paul and I before Teddy was born. We’re smiling. Really smiling. The kind of smiles that you see on newlyweds, or first-time-home-buyers.

My hospital gown and bed clearly visible. Paul next to my side where he never left. My sweaty curly hair that I put in a messy bun. Everything that represents those moments before your child is born.

But I can’t help but think, that is the last photo of me happy. Truly, freely, naively happy. Before my life changed. Before the silence filled the delivery room. Before the monitor beeping slowed down. Before the scrubs flew threw the air. Before the incisions were made.

I stare at her — the girl in the picture — and I ache for her. I miss her. And sometimes I wonder if she died the day Teddy did. Because I haven’t felt that kind of happiness since, and I don’t know if she’s ever coming back.

Grief has changed everything about me. My face. My voice. My posture. My eyes. I carry myself differently now, because I carry him. And I wonder if maybe this version of me is deeper, more tender, more aware — but I still miss her.

However, there are moments when I look at the picture, really look, and I see two people who are so in love with their son. That’s what the twinkle in our eyes was, that’s what those smiles were. Not naivety, not ignorance, but love.

We didn’t know he would die, but we knew he was ours. And we loved him with everything we had — joyfully, fully, innocently, and without hesitation. That happiness on our faces? That was Teddy. That was the light our son brought, even before he was born.

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So maybe she’s not entirely gone — that girl in the picture. Maybe she just lives somewhere else now. Maybe she’s still here, in every part of me that still loves him like that.

Still smiling, for her, for her husband, for Teddy.