Much to Say

I can't let the day pass without pouring out my heart.  Tomorrow, August 21st marks seven years ago that Lucas died.  Seven years ago we were in Philly, at CHOP, laying with him, talking to him, holding his hands, whispering in his ear and letting him go.  Telling him it was ok, telling him it was ok to stop fighting and to go find peace.  That's a pretty hard thing to have to tell your child.  At the same time, it was the thing he needed to hear us say.  God's gift to us in that situation was allowing us to come to that realization and not taking him before we were ready to let him go.  How utterly selfish of me to think that way.  Sometimes I have to stop and remind myself that losing Lucas was not about me, or my husband, or the Oldest, or ANY of our family.  It was all about his struggle.  Our aching hearts were only a result of watching him struggle and fight.  Our sadness was at its height when he passed away.  I was a zombie during that time.  I know that I was.  I remember my lowest point and could easily spew it out to you here.  No point.  For what?  In the end we are supposed to have learned something from all of this.  I suppose we have.  We have learned to love harder, to try to (key word, TRY) always do the right thing, teach the right way, be more forgiving (though that took a very long time and I still work on it today), be more kind (that too was a long path, a very long and winding path) and to be a little tougher, less sensitive to the little stuff.  The little things that get other people hung up, (being irriated with your spouse over something they said slightly wrong etc) we look at and its like water to us.  We have lived the bigger things, and all of that is so minute, it's like small potatoes.

Having Lucas and losing him was the happy and the sad.  The aftermath has been a mix of things and while it's true what they say, grief smoothes over time, gets 'easier to bear', I will never allow myself to forget that he was here, he existed, and mattered in a zillion ways others could maybe never understand.  So having said all that, I look to the present, but keep my eye on the future.  That is maybe what God wants us to realize.  He doesn't want us to get caught up in the past, even though our hearts go there frequently, we are to live for today, live for what we can be to others in this world, and give back to make the circle complete.  Maybe being caught in the past stifles the flow and kinks up the works.  Maybe so.

Tomorrow I will quietly go through the day with reverance and I bet I'll see butterflys, dragonflys and the like.  And I'll know.  In the depths of my soul, I will know that it's him.  Coming to visit and kiss my cheek.  One day........but until then, I will happily live for the Oldest and Littlest.  The Middlest is somewhere far better than where we are.  I trust in that to my core.

Peace.