It's the smallest things

that find you going "oh wow - didn't see that one coming."

These are my kitchen tiles. Actually, if you want to be technical, they are the tiles next to the back door, in the "dining" area of the kitchen.

It just looks like rubbish hey. Junk, on the floor, ready to be swept up and put into the bin. Its actually, what is left of the flowers. Ariana's flowers. And our flowers.

We threw them out a long time ago, but somehow, we just kept stepping over the dead leaves on the floor. Neither one of us, during what cleaning we've been bothered to do, has picked them up, or gotten rid of them. It feels silly, to be sentimental over some dead flowers on the floor.

Other people who have lost children, particularly babies, talk about how hard it is to pack up a nursery, to put away the things their baby was using at the time of their death. We have that feeling as well, despite Ariana never knowing life at home with us. Just three days before her birth, we got up the guts to buy a carseat in the sales. We debated back and forwards over it, but decided the prices were too good, so we got one. The box was still sitting in the lounge room when we went to the hospital that day. Someone thoughtfully stuffed it behind a cabinet before we got home. I found that tonight as well. It's still there, I don't have the heart to move it.

It amazes me, as ok as I feel most of the time, that I find myself doing things differently now. I don't feel heartbroken all the time. I miss my baby but most of the time I just feel a bit empty, It's bearable. But some things are different. I used to play certain games on Facebook. Since Ariana, I haven't touched any of them. I don't know why, its not as if I ever played them WITH her, but now I just can't look at them. Matt still plays them, I can't watch him do it. Yet it's just a game. We haven't eaten dinner at the dining table since Ariana. I don't know why. Part of it was that there were flowers all over it, so we just ate in the lounge with Lucy at her little art table. Then the flowers all died, and we threw them out, but we still didn't sweep the old ones up, or wipe the fallen leaves from the table. Somehow, we just didn't do it, it was like an unspoken thing.

The leaves and flowers are gone now, and tomorrow night, more for Lucy's sake than our own, we'll eat dinner at that table again. It won't be the same as it used to be. After all, everything is different now. But we have to get back into the swing of the way things were. Which means routine, and cleaning the house, and not leaving stuff on the floor for a month despite how attached we feel to it!

The shelves still stand in the loungeroom with all of Ariana's things, apart from the Teddies which are in Lucy's room. They will be there forever I suspect. But the kitchen, and the rest of the house - It's like she was never there. It's tragic really, that she never was.