It would be easier, in a way, if it happened all at once.
If the vivid memories of his voice, his laugh, his body language, his sense of humor just disappeared-POOF!-now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t. Then I could make a single adjustment.
But that’s not how it is. Instead, the living proof of his existence recedes like a wave from the shoreline, only there’s no returning surge to remind me of the force that was Dominic.
Read the rest here: https://thelifeididntchoose.com/2016/04/18/slow-fade/
It may seem like the easiest way to get an inside scoop on how I’m REALLY doing-but don’t do it.
Please don’t ask my kids how I’m doing.
Respect the fact that they have their own grief burden. Respect family privacy and understand you are putting them in an impossible position.
If you want to know-to REALLY know-how I’m doing, ask me.
Read the rest here: Please Don’t Ask My Kids How I Am Doing
Child loss is not a single event.
Of course the moment when the last breath leaves a body is noted and duly recorded because the law requires such. I can pull out Dominic’s death certificate (what an ugly thing to have to say about my child!) and it reads: Time of Death: 1:10 a.m. April 12, 2014.
But I didn’t know about it until 4: 15 that morning when the deputy rang the bell.
So for me, his death came then.
Read the rest here: Child Loss is Not a Single Event
Oh, how easy it would be to become bitter!
If I’m honest, part of me just wants to tell the world to “Get lost!”.
But the wiser part of me knows that’s neither a helpful nor healthy response to even this most awful burden of child loss.
Lament is how we bring our sorrow to God. Without lament, we won’t know how to process pain. Silence, bitterness, and even anger can dominate our spiritual lives instead.
~Mark Vroegop – Dark Clouds Deep Mercy
Because my bitter spirit wouldn’t stop with me. It would spread like kudzu on an Alabama roadside.
Read the rest here: https://thelifeididntchoose.com/2019/04/14/bitterness-is-a-terrible-legacy/
In response to something I posted in a bereaved parents’ group a friend used the term “tangible absence” to describe what I was feeling.
She is so right.
When I imagine something I’ve never actually experienced-even when I might say “I miss such and such” it’s not the same as when I’ve had something and it’s been taken away.
I can only miss the imaginary in an ephemeral, insubstantial way. I miss what I once possessed in a tangible way.
Read the rest here: https://thelifeididntchoose.com/2019/04/06/tangible-absence/
Dependable routine is one of my most important coping mechanisms.
I like slipping from one familiar chore to the next without thinking.
It keeps my mind busy in an effortless way that leaves little room for random thoughts, little space for grief-inducing memories to sneak in and trip me up.
Change is really not my friend.
Still, change is upon me (and millions of others!) because of this virus. So I’m doing the best I can to cope.
Instead of a house to myself, now my husband is working from home. Instead of quiet mornings alone, conference calls echo off the walls and follow me out open windows to the yard. Instead of before dark breakfast and early lunch with the kitchen closed by noon, I eat early, he eats later, I eat lunch and he eats supper. Kitchen open til eight.
None of those are things I can’t get used to.
After all, I’m blessed he’s here, has a job and we have not only enough to eat but a wide variety . I like cooking and love finding creative uses for leftovers.
What no one but me knows about all the change is this: I’m walking places I tend not to go-in the house, in the yard, down our paths-and every place I set my foot holds memories I’ve been avoiding.
When we moved an old pen a couple weeks ago for new chickens we found a rusty chain attached to its base. While my husband and son were digging it out to use again I was transported to the day Dominic moved the pen years ago with the tractor. It was just me and him and he was a little perturbed with me that I needed it moved. I saw him in my mind’s eye plain as day on the tractor. I could hear his baritone voice above the trusty thrum of the engine and picture him hopping down from the seat, unhooking the chain and driving off to park the tractor.
It was a flash. Here and gone in an instant. But the rest of the day I suffered from a grief hangover that I just couldn’t shake.
These are challenging days.
So much of the routine I depend on to guide me through has been shredded. So many of the habits I’ve developed over years are unavailable right now.
So I’m doing the best I can.
One day and one memory at a time.
Breathe in, breathe out.
Repeat.
Six years ago, the current worldwide crisis both inspired me to write and constrained me from writing.
There was so much to say but I wasn‘t sure most folks would understand.
Suddenly everyone was living a life they would not have chosen and for most, a life they couldn’t have imagined.
Things have since mostly returned to normal. Kids in school, parents working, social distancing a thing of the past.
But some never again knew the life they had before this virus made its way across the globe. Someone or several someones they loved were snatched from the here and now and transferred to the hereafter.
So what if I’m not rescued from a new illness?
What if my family isn’t spared from a terrible accident?
What if all the faithful prayers lifted on behalf of ones I love don’t stop death from claiming them?
Will I still believe?
Will I still trust that God is a loving Father who is in control and working all things together for His glory and my good?
That was precisely the question before Jerusalem’s Jewish citizens on Palm Sunday and the week that followed. Jesus entered the city to shouts of “Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!”.
The faithful lined the streets and believed the Messiah had come to rescue them from the tyrannical rule and reign of not only irreligious Gentiles but corrupt leaders within the Hebrew hierarchy.
It didn’t take long for them to give up hope and call for His crucifixion.
He didn’t live up to their expectations. He didn’t act according to their timetable. He didn’t rescue them from persecution and suffering.
So they discarded Him.
Twelve years ago I woke to Palm Sunday wondering why my family wasn’t spared, why my son wasn’t rescued, why death had crossed our threshold and taken up residence in our home.
I had to decide if Jesus was Lord of all or if He was Lord at all.
I came face to face with the fact that God doesn’t need my permission to run the world according to His will. He doesn’t require my consent to do (or not do) anything.
But a God that needs my approval is no God at all.
I went to church that Palm Sunday, lifted my hands and voice in spite of my broken heart because I knew Jesus had not abandoned us.
He is Messiah.
Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.
I don’t want to remember my son.
I want to make memories with him.
I want him to watch me grow old, to watch him get married and have children and to hear his voice mingled with his siblings at my table.
Read the rest here: https://thelifeididntchoose.com/2019/04/02/i-dont-want-to-remember-my-son/
Child loss has changed me in ways that continue to unfold even years later.
As pandemic and panic sweep the world, my heart has been both more anxious and less anxious at precisely the same moment.
I’ve experienced more generalized dread and unease fed by media frenzy, friends’ posts and comments and the other-worldly photos of empty streets in big cities and families hanging out balcony windows in Italy and Spain.
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Trauma from sudden death has left its mark and societal panic is is ripping open the wound.
The thin layer that protects my heart most days is wearing thinner.
When the thing you think won’t happen DOES happen, you simply can’t find solace in platitudes or pithy prayers or puny human promises that “every little thing will be all right”.
In a perverse twist, knowing the worst HAS happened, makes me less apprehensive about the future.
I’ve given up the idea that protection is guaranteed by doing all the right things or following all the rules or obeying every law.
Oh, we still do all that!
We are washing our hands, practicing social distancing and limiting necessary trips to anywhere. But my faith is not in any of those things to necessarily keep this silent, creeping evil from my doorstep.
Some might call it defeatist.
I call it reality.
The hours of each day are filled balancing these two opposite but very much connected feelings. Sometimes I want to crawl out of my skin or run as far and as fast as I can. Sometimes I just sit, waiting for whatever might happen TO happen.
The anniversary of Dominic’s death is less than two weeks away so all THIS is layered on top of THAT.
Honestly, it’s exhausting and I wake most mornings already worn out.
Almost six years has taught me the world doesn’t stop spinning and the rising sun won’t wait.
So here I am.
Again.
Many of you are waking up each day and facing a world you don’t recognize.
I’ve been doing this for over half a decade.
Almost seven years ago my family’s world was shaken in much the same way everyone’s world is being shaken today.
It was precisely as disruptive, unthinkable, even more tragic and there was not one thing we could do to change it except live through it.
I know thousands of bereaved parents and surviving siblings who have learned to live in the time they are given.
If you want to know how to face this crisis with courage, ask them. 
thelifeididntchoose 