Sacred Grief

     When you lose a child, when you are a parent with one child your new friend will never meet, when you imagine milestones, smiles, and tears...because you can't *experience* them, when the grief is as fresh ten years later as it was ten seconds after... when that is your reality, many choose to become an advocate.

     You champion the children coming, you fight to make this world just a little bit safer, kinder, healthier. You fight for it, because you fight for your own child lost. You carry a burden that is so heavy, you use the full weight of it to change *something*.

     I never felt called into advocating for testing, medicine, or even awareness...that was not the burden that I felt, is not the burden I feel...but I do see a place God has led me in this. The change I want to see, the legacy I want to leave as a mother who is missing a vital piece.

     Grief.

     There is a sacredness in grief, in grieving, in mourning what was lost. Weeping should come, it needs to come. And we, as a society, we need to support it. Allow it. Encourage it.

     If we do not grieve, how then will we be comforted? If we do not let the heavy, soul racking sobs come, how will our tears be dried?

     Over the last ten precious years I have seen my pain mirrored on faces of people who love me, love my family and loved sweet Eden, even if they never met her. That mirroring pain has been a soothing balm. It has shown me that I have permission to *feel*. It has reminded me that I can and will be comforted. It has allowed my baby to live, even while she is gone. It has pointed me back to God more times than I can count. My grief has been sweet, in it's utter bitterness.

     We need not be afraid of grief, that it will swallow us whole, that it will leave us with nothing left. We need to look at it, hold it in our hands, sit with it, and recognize that it is a part of us. That it has shaped us in ways we could not otherwise have been shaped. Grief has beauty in it's depths.

   

One More Year

    It's weird to only update once a year... it's weird to only mark birthdays when once this little blog was my lifeline... it's also so strange to look back and read the yearly birthday entries.

    Last year I was less than a day from saying goodbye to my dad, and missing my sweet Eden, and separated from my little family by distance. I was alone. Far too alone.

    Today, the house is as full as any Monday, the sun is brightly shining, the world seems fine and everything is normal.

    I don't feel the gaping loneliness of last year...

    But my stomach hurts and the tears are dancing just below the surface. I want to right something profound today, something new... but there will never be a *new* for Eden. Her news were all celebrated seven years ago... every single new thing was lived in 36 far too short hours.

    There is no new grief, it's still there. waxing and waning as it does, but it is not new.

    We change, my family, the world... we change everyday, but Eden's life doesn't. The impact changes... but largely we are a family of seven with six... and there is no new there.

    Today I am marking your birthday, sweet baby, because you are still very much a part of me, a part of us. You are still our daughter, sister, and niece. We still miss you. We'd still give just about anything for one more snuggle, one more kiss, one more hour, one more day. We still have hope to see you again. We are still grateful for the too brief time. We are still missing you.

Too many goodbyes

Today the weather is very much like that overcast October day 6 years ago. There is also the same sense of fear...yet it is not tinged with miraculous hope today.

Today I am sitting in my parents home, missing my mother who left us not quite four months ago, watching my daddy struggle for each breath as his body shuts dow and his soul prepares to leave this earth.

I generally try to keep this day as a celebration, as the day my baby girl was born. The 14th of October I hold as sacred because it was the day my daughter lived... from midnight to midnight, she lived the entire day...on Tuesday I will mourn once again as the day she left my arms for an eternity with My Heavenly Father. On the thirteenth I reach back and try to connect with the hope of the day she was born.

Today that feels impossible. Today there is eternal hope for my daddy, but there is no earthly hope. I am mourning though he is still here...because his spirit feels gone.

Today I am struggling with God's timing, and the crushing pain of the loss of my baby, my mommy, and now my dad.

Today feels incredibly big and I feel incredibly small.

Yet still, somewhere deep I know God is here. That I am not abandoned and that He is still measuring my tears.

Five Years Again

I never, in my wildest dreams, imagined that the greatest most difficult anguish I would ever endure, would link my soul with another mother, a country away, whose heart was being torn in all the same ways.

I couldn't have foreseen that the bitterest hurt would breathe life to the sweetest connection.

But it did.

Five years ago a beautiful baby boy was born into the arms and hearts of a family still mourning from a fresh heartbreak. He was loved. He was cherished...and he died. His precious life is marked with just one date.

December 19th, 2007

In the months leading up to his birth, and the five short and oh-so-long years since, I have been so privileged to meet, befriend, and love his mother and his family. To count them as mine, just as I know they count me as theirs.

Our friendship was born in the mire and has emerged so beautiful as to honour our babies we held for far to short a time.

Today I am carrying Nathan in my heart and aching for my sweet Eden, but I am grateful...so grateful...for this gift.

I remember laying in that hospital bed, five years ago tonight, knowing it would only be a short time before we said goodbye. Watching the clock to see if you would make it past midnight. Wondering if your life would simply span a weekend, or if I might be able to keep you with me into "one more day".

I don't think I slept longer than 15 minute stretches while you lived, I didn't want to miss you. I feared you drifting away and missing it. I knew our seconds were numbered and I wanted, desperately, to be fully present for every one.

God woke me up from one of my cat naps. I know it was Him. I felt His presence, as real and true as anything seen. I am forever grateful for that.

I will always be glad that I got to spend those few seconds, alone with you, saying goodbye before I woke your exhausted daddy so he could say goodbye as well.

When you left me, I felt God take you...and more importantly, I felt His heart break for me.

As I'm sure it breaks now. To never have wanted a world like this...with this kind of pain.

I wish I could hold you again...so many times.

I wish I could dance with you. Laugh with you.

Someday...

In a few minutes it will be tomorrow...and in a few hours you will have been gone five years...and we will all keep living.

I will be sad, but I will have lots to be grateful for.

I miss you sweet baby...so much.

Milestone Birthdays

I think every family celebrates different ones in different ways, for us there are a few big birthdays. After the first, it's the fifth.

By five you are so much the little person. You start school that year and begin to get your own ideas about friends, toys, the world.

There are so many firsts in that fifth year.

But not for Eden. Her firsts and lasts were 36 hours apart, or one and the same.

This fifth birthday has been one of the hardest. In August, buying school supplies I ached for the supplies I didn't need. I wept for the tears I would not shed at the front gates. I wondered again why we were chosen for the privilege and heartbreak of being her parents.

Even looking into the face of sweet Zoe, she is nearly the same age as her brother was when Eden was born.

Today, this week, this month, it hurts fresh and brand new. Raw in a way it hasn't been in quite sometime...in a way that makes me yearn to escape it...a hurt so deep I can do nothing but bury my face in the hem of My Father's robes and weep.

I do not feel strong enough for a lifetime of this, yet I know I don't need my own strength to endure it.

I love you baby girl, every day I miss you...I can not wait to hold you again someday ~Mama

It's silly really...

Tonight I am debating about switching blog platforms, about buying a domain, about changing things up. Nothing earth shattering. And then the thought hits...

"Well, it would be silly to move *both* blogs."

And I almost can't breathe for the mere idea of leaving *this* blog behind.

I feel nearly suffocated by the thought.

Like I'd be leaving this small monument to my precious baby behind.

It feels like I'd be leaving her.

Alone.

By herself.

And the thought of that is crippling.

Most days I just miss Eden in the background. Life moves forward and is busy.

Then something like this happens and there is no air and the ache in my chest makes me feel hollow.

Oh baby, I miss you so much.