We had a pretty good day yesterday.
We skipped out on a Fundraising Pot-Luck after church to just have some family time. I did bring a main dish as our contribution, so I didn’t feel bad about skipping out.
It’s one of those things that some people just don’t understand, but I am learning to just deal with the idea that not everyone understands the choices that we as a family make. The even bigger point in all of that (for me) is that it’s not necessary for others to understand what we do or why we do it. The fact of the matter is – we are called to live our lives the best way that we see fit for us and that we choose to allow others the grace to make the best decisions for themselves – WITHOUT judgment!
I can try to explain our thinking in it all….if anyone cares. This is not about justifying our decisions, but about communicating what our choices are and why we’ve made those choices in case any of these choices or the reasons for these choices can help others with decisions they have to make.
When Nathaniel died, it affected all of us (minus Siah as he obviously wasn’t alive yet). The kids were old enough to know that a baby brother was coming (yes we had found out it was a boy) and were aware enough to know that something bad had happened and then to be devastated when told that their baby brother had died.
They were aware of the next three times that I got pregnant (I have not had easy pregnancies – read that as barfing my brains out and overwhelming tiredness….and after we lost Nathaniel, throw in a measure of depression just for fun) and equally as aware every time something went wrong and we had another loss.
We spent a lot of time together. We understood each other and what we were going through (age appropriately, of course) and the grieving process hit each of us differently. We all walked the road of Grief at different paces and in very different ways. Some of us talked, some of us shut it all inside, some of us exploded, some of us wore it on our sleeves, some of us journal-ed, some of us lost ourselves in work, some of us colored elaborate pictures, some of us wrote poetry……In some ways, we are all still processing.
In December 2009, just before Christmas, Xani came up to me and wanted to know what we were going to do about Nathaniel’s birthday. See, 5 years later and unprovoked – she is thinking about that day and Nathaniel and his death. I think what made this year really stand out is that “things have changed”. We’ve moved. We don’t live in the house that we did back then. We don’t even live in the same city that we did. So now, all those things that we did as traditions to remember and celebrate his place in our family……(from a child’s perspective) what happens to them?
I’m an adult. I can see that while we might do things in different locations, the most important thing is to remember and celebrate. But for a child……things have changed and what do we do now? The lack of knowledge can exacerbate the whole “out of control” helpless feeling. And that’s not fun for anyone, including children…..
Our tradition has always been to go to a restaurant and get breakfast together (even if it’s for lunch), then we go and buy a helium balloon per person and write personal messages from us to him. We always went to this one particular park to release them and we would watch until we could no longer see them in the sky. Then, we’d just spend the rest of the day together. There have been lots of tears some years, and less tears other. There has been laughter and just living in the moment. Embracing every emotion that comes and accepting it as normal. These have always been good days. Good days to remember and to celebrate a little life that had such a HUGE IMPACT in so many ways and all without ever having taken a breath. What a legacy to leave behind for such a tiny little person.
This year, January 24th fell on a Sunday and so we went to church, but skipped out on the lunch after to just go and be “us”. We went and got breakfast for lunch and fielded a bunch of questions from the kids about how and where the rest of the day would take place. We went out and got some balloons and brought them home to write our personal messages on them. Jon and I had thought about this one park close to us, but as we pulled out of our driveway, one of the kids suggested another park close by and all the kids seemed to really like that suggestion and so we turned right instead of turning left and headed out.
It is important to us to remember. It is important to us to allow our kids to process the loss of a sibling. Even in their own ways. I remember how shocked I was to find a poem written last year by one of my daughters about her fears of losing another one of her siblings. The pain and fear expressed in that poem was so raw and real and I know that she is still processing through the grief.
This is real to my kids. Heck, this is too real even for me. I can’t count the number of times that I flashed back to that day and the absolute emptiness, the nothingness that I felt and all the while feeling this horrible crushing pain that literally took my breath away.
It’s so hard to even try to put it to words how I felt, and yet I relived it often yesterday.
I kept pulling up Nathaniel’s picture on my Blackberry just to see that one more glimpse of my son.
We make the best decisions that we can for us. And as long as I can be content knowing that it was the best decision that I could make for me individually and for us corporately, then it doesn’t matter who “gets” it or who doesn’t.
What matters is that we had a day that we needed, together as a family. A day to remember, to celebrate, to heal, to process, to love, to laugh, to cry (if needs be)….we had each other!
In the end, nothing else matters.
