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Love in a Photograph

By on Nov 24, 2016 |

 We survived our family’s first holiday without our son. It was a long Thanksgiving weekend. It was a bit melancholy for me. My two youngest adult children helped my husband and me put up the Christmas tree and some decorations today. Almost all of the ornaments reminded us of our son. We laughed a little and said Bless It a lot. Thanksgiving weekend, two years ago, was the last Thanksgiving that we all had together. I had been dreaming of getting a family portrait made for a while and the stars lined up perfectly with all of my kids in town. We had a portrait session on the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend. My kids were 27,24,21,and 18 at the time. The last time I had a portrait made of all of my kids was when they were 15,12,9,and 6. It was a pretty fall afternoon. Everyone was in an agreeable mood and the photographer was so sweet and encouraging. She took pictures of the six of...

Love and Grief

By on Nov 20, 2016 |

Grief. Oh, what a horrible sounding word. It even sounds like it feels bad. It makes your stomach hurt. It makes a stabbing pain in your heart. It takes your breath away. I have had all of these thoughts and feelings in the last 7 weeks. Two days ago, I had an epiphany. Grief is really love for someone who is gone. Love doesn’t sound horrible. It doesn’t sound bad. It can make your heart feel a little fluttery sometimes and it can take your breath away. When I really thought about it, we do not grieve someone we don’t love. We feel sorrow for the family but we are able to resume our life. When we lose someone we love, the love doesn’t go away. When we lose someone we love and is part of our heart, there is always going to be a little piece missing but the love is still there. Once I re-framed the thought process, missing someone we love is a positive emotion while grieving sounds like...

Grief and Impatience

By on Nov 14, 2016 |

Why do we have to grieve? Why does it take so long to feel better when a loved one passes? Why does it have to hurt so long? If someone could just give me a date when this grieving period will be over then I can make a paper chain, pull off a link every day, and it will make it go faster. My son passed away six weeks ago. I am getting up every morning at my normal time, making up the bed, getting dressed, leaving the house, smiling, and taking care of my business. To those who don’t know, I probably just look like my normal self, maybe just a bit quieter. If you didn’t know about my loss, you probably couldn’t tell that I am heartbroken on the inside. The definition of grieve, according to Oxford Living Dictionaries, is to feel intense sorrow; to cause great distress. In a world where we order fast food through a speaker, read our news from the sidebar of our Facebook page, get our new...

Visitation

By on Nov 7, 2016 |

Other people’s dreams are so boring…but I am going to share this one with you anyway. My 29 year old son passed away on October 1st. This past week was particularly hard because on November 1st, it was a reminder all day long that one month had passed. He passed away late in the evening on October 1st. So all day long on November 1st, I made myself sick wondering if he had a good day on October 1. Was the sun shining? Did he play tennis? Did he have a great day? I hated thinking all of those things but I couldn’t make myself stop thinking about it. To a mother, no matter their age, they are still your baby, their bodies just got bigger. Yesterday, early Sunday morning before waking up for the day, I had a dream. In the dream a non-descript woman in white said, “Come with me.” I asked her where we were going. She said, “You will see.” Together, we walked down an empty hall. We turned a...