Quiet Ramblings

I realize I have been quiet on the blog this year.  Months and months have passed since I have written.  Another birthday for Elena has come and gone.  Her due date approaches rapidly.

This has been a difficult year.  2014 ended tragically (see previous post about my brother-in-law's unexpected death).  2015 began the same, with news in the wee hours of the first day of the year that our dear friends had just lost their baby girl.  So much heaviness, so many questions unanswered.  It seems so senseless.  Innocent lives snatched away so early and so suddenly.  Yet the world keeps spinning.

And for most of us, life continues.  Perhaps not the life we envisioned, for we never dreamed we would live with such gaping wounds; but life continues nonetheless.  We somehow continue despite the earth shaking changes.  We stumble our way into a new normal, probably always yearning for what would have been, but eventually accepting, to some degree or other, what simply is.  We emerge from the overwhelming darkness, blinking and squinting in the sometimes painful light, gradually beginning a new path.  And new life begins.

I am lucky.  In His infinite grace and mercy, God has shared so many gifts with me.  While this year has had great difficulties, it has also brought rich blessings.  Elena is a big sister again.  Another little boy has joined our family.

He is too young to understand having a sister in heaven, but he already hears her name.  It is spoken in our home.  My Sunshine has outgrown his babyish way of saying her name - Uh-YAY-nuh - and now speaks it clearly.  My Rainbow, still working on his articulation, pronounces it WAY-nuh, and usually insists that she is his "MY WAY-nuh." (I suppose that possessiveness goes with the territory of being a toddler.)  I wonder how my little Pot of Gold will eventually say her name.  Will the two little boys include her in their family drawings for school and correct me if I fail to mention her to strangers like her big brother does?  As my oldest was the only sibling to meet her, I wonder if his connection to her will always be stronger.

So many questions.  So much change.  And so much quiet despite the constant sounds of a house full of boys.  I feel like there is some deep knowledge I should have gained over the last four plus years.  Elena's death was such a significantly profound event that surely I should have some significantly profound wisdom as a result of my experience; yet I feel I have nothing new to say or write.

I feel like I am mostly in a place of acceptance now, not "over it" or okay with it but able to live with it as it is what is, yet I still ache for her.  I still struggle with the guilt of happiness.  And with the guilt of that guilt.  It feels wrong to be happy when my darling daughter is dead.  It feels wrong to be sad when my beautiful sons are alive.  It feels like a delicate dance, balancing the joy and the sorrow, the celebration and the mourning.  And to be honest, I have two left feet, no rhythm or coordination.  I am not at all competent at the dance.  I stumble more than anything.  And I feel that I am a broken record, writing variations of the same each time I come to the blog.

I have remained quiet this year, waiting for adequate words to articulate something meaningful.  I suspect they are not coming.  So I am left with writing things that are wholly inadequate.  And yet I still need to write them...for her, for me.  I ache to mother her.  This is one of the few ways in which I feel I can, and so here I am.

Here I am, my sweet daughter, offering you all I know how.  Here am I, inadequate with insufficient gifts.  I am sorry I cannot give you more.

Goodbye 2014

Another year has slipped away.  The year has ended, and the end was not a happy one.

It's still a bit surreal.  For the first time since I met my husband we were not together at midnight as the year changed.  I am still nervously awaiting his return home from an evening with a friend.  It's not great weather, and I worry about that and about the crazy drivers out, and I wonder if it was a mistake to say, hey, have fun, see you when you get home.

We traveled this past weekend to attend a family Christmas celebration.  Among those gathered were one of my husband's sisters and her husband.  On Sunday morning they headed out to start their trip back home.  We gave them hugs and bid them safe travels.  Early that evening, as we were driving home, we got the phone call.  Another driver had crossed the median on the highway and hit them head-on.  My brother-in-law was killed.  My sister-in-law was taken by care flight to a hospital near our home (not near their home out-of-state, but I guess the closest trauma center happened to be only an hour from my husband and me).  We drove straight to the hospital, arriving a few hours after we got the call.  Twelve hours after smiling, laughing, and hugging my brother-in-law and sister-in-law, I was standing in a hospital room looking at my sister-in-law with her cast, cuts, and bruises who was now a widow.  Unreal.  Heart-wrenching.  Helpless.

I felt so helpless and still do.  So utterly useless.  I feel like I should have learned something from Elena, that I should have some words that would help her, some advice, some knowledge that would benefit her.  Instead I have no idea what to say, what to do.  While I know the situation is not the same and I abhor comparing losses, I feel like there is a connection to be found in losses this close to the heart.  I cannot fathom losing my husband, but four years ago I could not fathom losing my child either.  I think those must be among the most painful of losses, so unnatural and unexpected.  What do you say?  What do you do?  I feel like I should know the answers to those questions, that having experienced something somewhat similar, having planned a funeral at a young age that I was not at all prepared to plan, that I should be able to help.  Instead, all I have to offer is showing up at the hospital, showing up at the funeral, sitting there near her with nothing to say, only a heart that breaks for her but not even the words to express even that.

What a rotten ending it has been.