I remember the weeks
following Jack’s death coming across something I’d found on Pinterest about
grief that, at the time, spoke to me and made a lot of sense. It said, “Grief is like the ocean; it comes
on waves, ebbing and flowing. Sometimes
the water is calm, and sometimes it’s overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim.”
It’s been a good long
while since my last post. Just about a
month. I wrote on Jack’s birthday, like I
have the two previous years before, because I feel like I owe that to him but
after that I just didn’t have any steam in my tank to keep it going. The truth is I’ve just felt sad. I let myself get bogged down in some of the
sadness and rather than stopping to acknowledge it, I’ve been plowing ahead and
it caught up to me. Don’t get me wrong,
there has been a lot of really amazing stuff peppered in there but I haven’t been all
in on the experience part. I’ve been distracted by my heavy
heart.
My girl is so full of
life that it radiates off of her but it can be exhausting trying to mirror the
excitement she’s looking for after coming home from work. A career I used to love has shifted into
job-something that pays the bills-but also uses most of my patience and so I
find myself digging at the bottom of the barrel to muster some for a girl that
deserves so much more than that. God love
her though, she’ll call me out and let me know when I could be doing better and
forgive me when it’s the best I’ve got.
As tired as this heart has been, she jump-starts it when she asks me to
climb in bed with her and sing her her song before she falls to sleep.
And then there’s the
boy. This sweet, sweet baby boy. My God, he makes life sweeter, with his big,
gorgeous, blue eyes that dance when he gets excited and his chubby cheeks that
he lets me smother with kisses. But with
every morsel of goodness comes a pang of sadness as I realize over and over
again what we really lost that day his big brother died. But I breathe him in as deeply as I can,
knowing how lucky I am to have been given this little love to pour my heart into.
Through the fog of
sadness there were still some really bright spots. A Valentine’s Dance for
Kennedy and Daddy, lots of snuggles, snow days, our annual visit from cousins
filled with fun and firsts.
One of those firsts
was Carter’s first sickness. A high
fever meant sleepless nights for me, where a heightened sense of fear had me
standing over his crib to make sure he was breathing. And as I stood watching
his chest rise and fall I found myself begging God to make me stop being so
afraid; to stop being afraid that this baby boy could be taken from me too. It ended up being an ear infection that put
my happy little guy out of sorts and stopped us from making our visit we’d
planned to Boston to see my best friend.
He’s slowing getting back to himself and my fears are dulling around the
edges.
It’s planning mode now. Trying to get everything in order and stay
upbeat preparing for Jack’s Herd’s Second Annual Cocktail Party and Silent Auction. I try to remind myself not to be sad while
doing this; that this is how we help celebrate our first boy’s legacy. I know when the stress passes I will find my
footing again, and hopefully that’s in time to enjoy a wonderful night.
You see that quote I
mentioned before about waves and grief has a ring of truth to it. Over these last three years though I’ve
learned something that takes the whole ocean smile a little further. Grief is more like a rip tide. It can come on strong and quick and sometimes
out of nowhere. As a little kid,
spending loads of time at the beach, my dad used to warn us if we ever got
caught in a rip tide, not to fight against it, that it could exhaust you
causing you to drown. Instead swim
parallel to the shore until you are free.
So my grief, I’ve stopped fighting against it, I swim with it and change
my direction to get free of it. It took
me a few years to figure out that if I fight against this sadness it will
overtake me. I have to respect my hearts
need to feel what it feels and to give it the time to call out to the little
boy that took part of it with him.
