Light

I've been talking and listening to some other bereaved parents about how there are things - normal, everyday, things - that happen with our living children that have taken on more meaning to us as bereaved parents. Things like play dates, music classes, trips to the playground. Things we did or imagined doing with our children that didn't live. When I take my kids to the park or simply play with them, I'm often thinking about how I never got to do these things with Max - and the normal, everyday things feel therefore more special. I appreciate them more. 

Then there are the special things. The things I fantasized about doing with Max: when I was pregnant with him, when he was a baby, after he died. Birthday parties, vacations, trips to Disneyland. They are dripping with intensity and joy for me. They are life affirming - exponentially increasing the gratitude I feel for their lives and my own: feelings that during the especially dark period of my life, when I felt no gratitude for my own life, I really couldn't have imagined ever feeling again. 

Every birthday my living children celebrate feels like a gift. Every special outing like the best day of my life. I look forward to them the way I looked forward to things when I was a kid. And when plans get spoiled, it probably feels much more disappointing to me than it would to a non-bereaved parent.

For a while before we moved here, things felt very heavy for me again. I was having a really hard time seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I felt thrown back into the darkness for many, many reasons. 

These were the moments that kept me going: