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Markers in time. Unbelievable yet true. How can it feel like an eternity since you’ve been gone while simultaneously feeling like it happened just yesterday?
You’re missing a beautiful summer, my girl. Your perennials are growing, as are your precious children. They run around the yard, splashing water on each other and laughing. Doing all the things kids do in the summer. Yet, I know their little hearts are heavy also, especially at bedtime when it’s time to settle down. They sing songs about Jesus and Heaven, glad you are there, but so very sad you aren’t here with them instead.
I know the feeling. These are my thoughts exactly. You won the “golden ticket” to paradise and I should be happy for you. But my own sadness that you aren’t here is strong.
Life goes on, and you do too – in my memories, and little moments shared with others as we reminisce, or think of how you would have done things had you been here. I’m coming to the realization that joy and sorrow can co-exist; that I can think about you sometimes without tears, although most of the time, the tears come – and I let them.
What a paradox! That we can weep and rejoice in the same breath without contradiction! (Paraphrased from Every Moment Holy Volume 2*) I laid new flowers on your grave. All yellow because yellow is your favourite colour.
Six months in, I’m nowhere near being healed. As I’m coming to learn from others who have walked this path, complete healing never comes. There will always be a scar. A wound. But you learn to cope with it. To live differently.
Some days I can distract myself enough to make it seem like I’m doing well. I can put on my “game face” and interact with others, doing what’s necessary. Survival and maintenance are the orders of each day. But I realize there is no “getting over it”. Nor do I ever want to get over it, for you are precious to me. I loved you with my whole heart when you were alive and i still love you just the same. That will never change. So, I’ll let the tears flow when they come and let myself smile and laugh sometimes, too.
“Shallow positivity is powerless to reach and heal those places that only tearful lamentation can address. This grief is not a thing that might be quickly mended or wished away. It is more like a long journey into a wild waste, and you, alone, O Christ, can shepherd me through it.”* (EMH V2 page 243)
*Every Moment Holy Volume 2; Douglas McKelvey; Rabbit Room Press; “A Liturgy for When Someone Thinks You Should Be Over it by Now”