Living Through The Holidays

There is an absence that never ceases. You feel it at every gathering, every time the “whole family” is together. 

There is a fierce desire to have your baby remembered. And to have your struggle acknowledged. 

I’m going to preface this by saying that it is no ones responsibility to remember my child, nor acknowledge my struggles. But you must understand that regardless of that, things still hurt, even if it’s no one’s fault. 

People have all sorts of different ways of remembering Kimber. Some people remember him the way I do. Some people remember him less. And some people don’t remember him at all. 

Today, I’m in the stage of letting go of the strong desire to remind people to remember Kimber.  

I was in a protective state for a long time. 

I brought him up when people forgot him. I brought his picture when I thought there was going to be pictures of the whole family. I included him in the number of grandchildren in our family. I didn’t let people say that we didn’t have children. 

Because it hurt...it hurt very much. 

Guess what? It still hurts. But I know it’s not anyone else’s responsibility to remember my baby, to include my baby, or to celebrate my baby.

So, I’ve been letting it go. Letting him be excluded, knowing that it’s never purposeful, just the sad reality of losing a baby. That one day, for most people, he stops being remembered by the world except in random conversations of times past and long ago heartaches and trials. 

Kimber’s Birthday was very hard this year. Because I know that we will not have these celebrations for long. The silly kid parties will grow up with my nieces and nephews and eventually, no one will celebrate the way we would if Kimber was alive. And I don’t want that to be true...but it very much is.

So, I’m stuck in this in-between place where I don’t want to grow up anymore, I want time to stand still. Because part of my heart feels frozen in time in the moment when his heart stopped beating. 

But, I still want to keep moving forward, to keep striving and doing whatever God calls us to. 

So here we are: in a phase of growing that hurts very deeply. But it’s a time I knew would come.  An ever-present process of letting go of trying to control how others remember Kimber, and solely focusing on how we can still choose our own path of remembering.  

And this makes me ever more thankful for grace. God’s grace is extended so fully to me, especially during those times when I don’t handle things surrounding Kimber well. I’ve come to find that it’s an almost tangible reminder to also extend that grace to others, even with a hurting heart. 

 

You cannot live in the bitterness that your baby has died, that people don’t love him the way you do, and that his memory will never be the same. And for such a time as this, there is much grace.