Somewhere Over the Rainbow

It's fall again. The season that makes me think of Olivia more than any other time of the year.
Now that it's been almost two years since she was born and died, it's become a lot easier than it used to be to just go about my day without really thinking of her. I pass her photos several times each day - especially at work where a framed scrapbook page of her pictures since on my desk - I tell people about her all the time... but I don't even remember the last time I actually sat down and let it completely sink in. Until today.

This afternoon/tonight after pretty much everyone else was gone from the office, and I was packing up my cubicle (Moving to a different office) and trying to organize everything into several different boxes. I was listening to Pandora on my desk computer, and had it set to the Micheal Buble station.

Apparently, it could also be called the Somewhere Over the Rainbow station.

Three different versions by three different artists played within a time period of about 45 minutes. Somewhere Over the Rainbow, the Faith Hill version, is the song that we played during the photo slideshow that we made for Olivia's memorial service. I never realized before how common that song is until recently. It's really hard for me to listen to, especially the slower versions of the song.

For some reason though, I didn't skip the song today. By the third time the song played, I was sitting at my desk staring at the pictures of her in the frame. An awful feeling came over me while I was looking at her. I'm sad about her all the time, but this was the first time in months that I really let myself feel the loss.

I just kept looking at her face thinking,"holy. crap. that baby in the picture is MY daughter. MY daughter is dead".

After that, I couldn't really get a whole lot of work done. I moved very slowly, and didn't end up coming home until almost 8:00pm.

How in the world is it possible that we're coming up on her second birthday? I can't even imagine what it would be like with a 2 year old little girl running around here. I don't really even want to let myself think about it. It's just too hard.

We miss you, little one.