Yes, it was.

Sometimes I feel like I have blown things out of proportion. That perhaps I have made Gabriel into more than he was, that the pain I've felt is out of proportion to the loss. Maybe it's because so few people (fortunately for them) really understand what the type of loss is and how it tears at you and turns everything upside down. There comes a point, I think, where you have to question things because when most people around you act one way or believe one thing, it makes you question yourself.

But I went back, drawn to it, and re-read the story of Gabriel's birth. We will soon be at a year since it happened and I think about him a lot. I think about the circumstances a lot. I feel like I never left that time, the fact that nearly a year has passed completely puzzles me.

I read it over again.

And I did not make it something bigger than it was. I did not dramatize what happened. I did not imagine it to be somehow more awful or important than it really was.

If anything, I underestimated the horror of what happened to me, to us. Reading it dispassionately, forgetting for a moment that that is our story, I was horrified. I was moved to tears by the bewildering experience.

No wonder I was paralyzed. No wonder I am still lost and sad. It never should have happened. But it did.

I am heartbroken yet about losing my son, but time has given me the space to be heartbroken in a different way; to see how terribly wrong it was. I can see that I oughtn't to have gotten over it by now, that I may never get over it. And that's not wrong or bad.