This Monday I’m joining some blogger friends in launching a weekly synchroblog we’re calling “The Parent ‘Hood.” I hope that you’ll join us. Visit Fried Okra for all the details.
***
My son barreled through the garage door, wailing. “Mom, isn’t there anything we can do today?”
I put my book down. “Sure! We can go to the park!”
He looked at me, disappointed. “Is there anything else?”
I couldn’t stop the amused smile from creeping across my lips. “What do you want to do?”
His sobs disappeared. “I want to play with neighbors. Will you walk me across the street to see if they’re home?”
They weren’t. As we walked back across the street to our house, he turned his impish blue eyes up to mine and asked, “Can you and me go the park, just us? Like a mommy-son date?”
Of course. (Funny how it has to be his idea.)
A few minutes later, I sat on a bench at the edge of the playground, watching him careen around, his blond hair dripping sweat and his cheeks flushed.
We look like a typical mom and son, me pushing him on the swings one minute, smiling indulgently the next as he hollers “I’m king of the castle!” from the top of the slide.
No one knows that next to the swings, among a grove of adolescent shade trees that aren’t quite mature enough to provide shade, lies a sign with my daughter’s name on it. I don’t visit it every time we play at that park, but this day, I did.
He bopped over as I fiddled with my wide-angle camera lens. “Mom, what does this say?” he asked.
I read it to him. “In ‘glory-ous’ memory of Elli, 2000-2008.” [“Glory” by Selah with Nichole Nordeman was Elli’s favorite song the year she died.]
“That’s my sister!” For a half a second, he paused, then grabbed a stick and began digging in the dirt next to the sign. Another second and he was off, calling back to me, “I want to do everything here, Mom!”
I wandered back towards my bench, watching him and wondering how life keeps going.
I’m that parent. The one who has lost a child. But you can’t tell by looking. The hole in our family is invisible, the gaping wound in our soul hidden from the other playground parents around me.
I don’t know how we keep going. I only know that we did and we do. Our kids keep growing and learning and needing. I don’t have the luxury of going off the deep end or disappearing underneath my bedding, attractive as that is so many days. I don’t even get a break from visiting the children’s hospital where Elli spent so much of her short eight years of life.
Next month, she will be gone 4 years. Four years. In two weeks, my oldest son turns 10. None of it seems possible.
The wrenching tearing of death has changed how I parent. I don’t hover. I let my kids (sometimes make them) work things out on their own. I squash my over-protective fearful self down under the bone-deep knowing that if death is coming, I can’t stop it. Our daughter died in her own bed, in her own bedroom, just a few feet from where we slept. If I can’t keep death from finding her there, in the safest place I know, it’s a waste of time and energy to try to keep it from my other kids.
It isn’t that I’m unafraid or unaware of danger. It isn’t that I’m careless or negligent. I am all too aware. I’m terrified that something tragic will happen to another person I love. I know all too well that it can indeed happen to me. It’s that I know my kids’ lives, and my own, are completely outside my control. There’s little I can do to keep death at bay. I don’t want to waste these precious moments or miss the joy in them by worrying. They will be gone in another breath. I want to treasure these minutes, hold them close, and remember them later, when my house is quiet and my arms are empty.
***
Thank you for writing these thoughts down so skillfully. You are giving the rest of us a much-needed perspective.
It seems incredible, even this much further down the road, that life, somehow, goes on. You share so beautifully, though, how it simply must. When things die we are changed. But life can come from death, somehow–you have shown us that here. Thank you for your honesty and beauty.
Holly recently posted..How hope runs deep
We’re so glad you’re in our ‘Hood. Your life and what you bring to the table enriches ours.
~Chris Ann & Kristin
“I don’t have the luxury of going off the deep end or disappearing underneath my bedding …” I think that speaks so precisely to what so many must have asked you, “how do you go on after losing a child?” You don’t have the luxury of doing otherwise.
I love when you write about Elli. Remember when you shared that picture of your dream of how she wrote her name? I don’t know why, but that just stayed with me. I think of that, of her, of you, so often. Maybe because my oldest is nearing eight and when I think of Elli, I just want to shout at heaven that it’s too short! Too little. Not enough.
Thank you, always, for trusting us with this wound, this part of the story. Through your words, Elli’s legacy, like her tree, grows strong. XOXO
Megan at SortaCrunchy recently posted..twins: fourteen weeks
Joy, this is powerful, and beautiful, and strong. Thank you for sharing your girl with us, for sharing your very self. xo
Oh, Joy, this is making me tear up(very hard since my crying gene got shipped off to someone else). You’re right too often we look okay, but we’re not. I wish more people took the time to dig a bit deeper or give more grace.
Sarah Askins recently posted..We Live These Lies
I can’t fathom one iota what that pain must be like, but the way you picked yourself up and kept moving AND mothering is just a beautiful and inspiring example. Love you!!!
the Blah Blah Blahger recently posted..ONE BAD PERM AFTER ANOTHER; THE STORY OF MY CHILDHOOD
I can’t even tell you how much I admire you, Joy. Going on in the face of loss, loving anyway. Every. single. day., this is a struggle for me, and I only got my heart broken. My kids give so much back to me…
Kelly Sauer recently posted..Lee Ann | Out of the Chrysalis
All I have is 14 weeks of pregnant, a baby 5 inches long, and a big granite stone I carved in our woods on a cairn of rocks. And it aches still 3 years later. I can’t imagine how you DON’T crawl under the comforter, at least now and then. how you sit under that tree and don’t melt into the dirt.
I DO understand coming to that odd sort of grips with the fact that “He holds the keys to death and Hades” and that “it is appointed unto man once to die” and that only God knows that time, that moment for each of us. Surely that we not be careless with our children. But why not let them play in the backyard while we put our feet up on the couch? Cancer and almost losing Amy several times, and losing our baby…down went the sledgehammer, again and again, on the nail of that lesson. I hold life loosely. I love it, almost unbearably so. But I have faith (little as it may be any given day) that “better is one day in His courts”. I HAVE to believe it. Or I’ll lose it for sure.
Love you – need to see you sometime soon. Maybe we can put together that “retreat” we talked about. Would be cheaper than Allume, I think, if we can find somewhere cheap and/or host it at someone’s house.
Genevieve Thul @ Turquoise Gates recently posted..I wasn’t sure I liked babies
Incredible, heart-wrenching writing. I find myself in your son in this piece, since I grew up with a sick sibling and lost my older brother at the age of 10. It forever shaped our family, my childhood, my whole life, really. But the beauty of life persisting in a family after a child’s death – it’s breath-taking. I’m amazed at how my parents did it. But the necessity of living, especially with other little ones underfoot, demands it. The mystery of grace in the sheer brokkenness and sorrow of living…thank you for this.
mothering spirit recently posted..a real labor day
You write so beautifully and honestly about grief. I love how your son took a minute to acknowledge her and then get back to playing. Thank-you for sharing this very difficult topic.
Heather recently posted..Just for a Day
oh, i am breathless with the beauty. with the pain. this touches me deep.
tara pohlkotte recently posted..Returning
O, friend. Thank you for saying this: “I don’t want to waste these precious moments or miss the joy in them by worrying.”
I needed to hear that today.
AllisonO of O My Family recently posted..welcome to the parent ‘hood!
Hey Joy? I so get this. I get the no-other-choice-but-to-go-on thing. I get the awareness that you live with every day. I have it too. My brother died in a tragic accident when he was 9 years old, and from the day I became a mother I have had this awareness that my daughters could be taken from me at any moment. It’s just the way life is.
Shelly Wildman recently posted..September Update
I salute your strength. And this is absolutely amazing: “If I can’t keep death from finding her there, in the safest place I know, it’s a waste of time and energy to try to keep it from my other kids.” Thank you …
Idelette McVicker recently posted..We Write to Make Bread
Joy…even though this is painful, it’s beautiful. This weekend marks 5 years since my first miscarriage. Five years and sometimes it’s still so fresh and raw and I don’t understand. I always appreciate your voice in sharing your joy and pain in Elli’s life and death.
Jessica recently posted..Learning What Enough Is
I am so sorry that you lost your child. I cannot imagine you’re heartache! Your post struck a nerve with me, as I feel often like I am not like other moms because my husband has a terminal illness that has changed our lives so drastically. This reminded me of a post I wrote a while ago titled “Not Like The Other Moms”. I just linked it up. Thank you for sharing your heart in this journey through grief. Blessings to you!
It will be 4 years November for us since Livvy died. It still feels like yesterday. I still struggle with how the world just moves on. It’s been a hard week my foster son started at the senior school Livvy never got to attend. While that was hard the group of parents I had been close to when Livvy was here invited me out for a meal. Comments like the gang is all back together or it’s like old times has nearly destroyed me. How can it be like before, a piece of heart my soul is in heaven.
It’s as you said people cannot see the grieve, but never the less its there.
My dearest friend lost her infant daughter suddenly two years ago. It changed how I parent, too and I know just what you mean about squashing down that fearful self in realization that it simply is no use to hover and smother in an attempt to protect. Only God’s hand can do that.