Our hearts are not any less broken though our minds can wander away from grief for long enough distances to be useful to others.
The stillness of our home without your deep raucous laughter or the resulting tormented hollars from your brother silences us and drives us from the comfort of the four walls.
Tears, that have long since hid from the public's eye, creep down your daddy's face when a father walks one of your friends walks his baby girl down the aisle.
We brace ourselves for family events knowing that the awkwardness of your absence and the collective albeit silent agreement to move together toward happy will often crowd our once easy space.
We are changed:
- we give grace we once withheld and withhold it from others for reasons explainable and unexplainable.
- we experience storms of anger - not with each other - but with the world, its fickle behavior, its falseness, its constant demand upon us unmoved by our loss.
- we huddle closely, the three of us and retreat from each other to miss you corporately and singularly.
- we pray - still, but differently. Our prayers evolving from a list of requests to a litany of remorse and lamentation.
- we recognize the vulnerability of us with greater respect and less bravado.
- we give more freely to those kids who need us as if we could ever make up for what the world is missing without you here.
- we cherish those brave enough to remember you with us, who are unabated by the awkward or the what if or the cost of vulnerability.
- we stand indebted to friends who rush without hesitation to pick up the mess when we drop our basket in grief.
- we remember you always, with great ease and incessant ache, telling our best stories and marveling in the strength that innately arrives as the story develops and the air around us is filled with the pieces of you we each carry.
- we resolve to champion on and compete - if not with others - at least with ourselves to be better tomorrow than we were today.
- we cry.
- we rest and cling to the sacred promise that heaven welcomed you and knows no darkness, no pain, no tears, that you are at home with the Light of the World.
#golighttheworld