Skip to main content

Because Loss Is Hard

We’ve been through a season of changes in the last two years (see my previous blog for more details). But I haven’t said much about how the process of grief has been woven into that and what that looks like.

My family home of 30 years is being sold. The home where I grew up; exploring the river, roaming the mountains, and running through open fields surrounding us.

It’s the place where we announced our pregnancy to my family, where we celebrated our baby and his little cousin together, where we talked about his future and hopes and dreams we had for him. 

It’s also the place we buried him. 


Where I cried at the kitchen table with my mom and my sister and said “I don’t know how to plan his funeral...I don’t know how to bury him”. 
Where I came to see my mom the day before his service and cried “I feel like a bad mom, and I don’t know how I can do this”. 

It’s the place we all gathered together and had a memorial service for him and it’s the place we come every year, on September 4, to celebrate his birthday, and his beautiful little life. 

And it’s hurts to say goodbye to a place that has meant so much to me. 

I know we can make new memories someplace else...but he was here. 

He was alive as we walked the garden pathways and along the creek. 

He kicked as his cousin slept soundly on my pregnant belly on the porch overlooking the river. 

He grew as we celebrated every second of his miraculous life after trying for so long to have him. 

      

   A year and a half ago we said goodbye to the home that held his nursery, hand painted by my mother. 
Goodbye to the place where he lived the most, where we felt him first kick and move, where we joyously awaited his arrival. 
The place where we deeply mourned, and the place where we found healing again. 

And now we are gearing up to say goodbye again. And its a new grief. 
Because I don’t have the little red headed boy to go and make new memories with. I only have the memories we made while he was alive. And this place was a part of it. 

I’m just so thankful that we have loving family and friends who walk with us through this grief. Who have always let us grieve and supported us. 

And I’m so very blessed to have a husband who loves Kimber as much as me and grieves with me. He loves Jesus and points me to Him when I feel lost in the sea.  
Because loss is hard...and there are always hard times, even when the years dull the sharp edges of grief. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Adoption Hurts

  "Is adopting her harder than you thought it would be?"      I think, when I weighed the options back in 2021, before I brought my 12 year old daughter home, I knew how hard it could be. I accepted that it could be brutal. But, honestly, I hoped it wouldn't be. I hoped maybe, just maybe, trauma hadn't sunk deep into her bones and colored everything she did.  Some people may have different perceptions on how prepared I was, since I did jump into it pretty quickly. But I think that I did acknowledge, and accept, how hard it could be. But the reality of life is that there is no real way to know how hard anything actually is until you're living it. Meaning, I knew how hard it could be...but had no idea what that level of hard would actually feel like.  Because it hurts. Raising a broken teenager hurts. It hurts my daughter. It hurts me. It hurts our relationship. It just hurts.  But just because something hurts...does that mean we aren't called to do ...

All is not Calm...

  If you look around my house this Christmas season you will definitely see the effects of motherhood here. You'll see school books strewn about all throughout the place. Constant reminders of frustration and fights that feel completely unnecessary to a mom and completely life-changing to a kid. I never wanted to homeschool my teenage daughter. I simply didn't want this kind of hard. But I saw her struggles and her self-esteem start to crack as she fell more and more behind her peers in school. A scar from her years of home-hopping which led to inconsistent schooling. A kid who got overlooked and pushed along anyway. So I pulled her out and we started from the ground up. And she's bright, let me tell you. She's catching up one day at a time, and I get a front row seat to see her shine. I push her more than she wants, and she hates when I do it. But I didn't become her mother because of what she could do for me...I became her mother because I knew what I could do for...

The Tainting of Tattoos

  You know, despite my tattoos...and piercings...and partially shaved head...I never considered that my look was very "alternative". At least not until someone said it was. I just thought that I was expressing myself in ways I might not have before. *I* like how I look...and I guess, if I'm being honest, what other people might think just doesn’t really factor into anything I do. But certainly not in the sense that I expect everyone to love everything about it all. My poor mom dislikes tattoos, my brother makes fun of my hair, and lots of people have said "oh...it's not quite my thing".  I never expected people to like these things about me the way I like them about me. I am not particularly bothered if it’s not your thing. It doesn't offend me. I'm not asking you to get a tattoo...or a piercing...or to shave your head. *I* did it because *I* wanted to...you just didn't factor into it. That being said...I've never been judged so...interesting...