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.