In this first year of grieving the loss of Kendra, I have learned many things. One is there is no timetable on grief, no allowable or acceptable time we should grieve our loved ones. I read somewhere that we never get over our grief, it is like a backpack. A backpack that we will forever carry with us, sometimes able to carry on and other times that backpack is so heavy that it causes us to stumble and fall. I like that analogy, because when you lose someone that you love so deeply and is an everyday part of your life, there is no way that you ever get over them being gone. When you lose a piece of your heart, a new piece does not grow in, that hole is there forever.
I have learned to realize that some people do not know what to say and others say things that you find are not very helpful. So when I hear a sentence that starts with "At least", I tend to think they just do not know what it really feels like to lose a child. Or some people will say nothing at all because they think they will upset you or that you do not want to talk about your child. I might get a little teary talking about her, but I do love to talk about her, that is all I have left.
Some days I get up and feel like it's OK, that I am moving forward and other days I get up and I feel upset all day and it's all I can do to get through the day. Some days I miss her so badly and other days I can think of her and smile. The holidays, birthdays, mother and father's day, Christmas and the monthly anniversary dates are still so hard. We lost her just before this past Christmas and that Christmas was such a blur. No one wanted to celebrate, but we still had Kendra's two little children and our other granddaughter Layne, so of course we had to still have Christmas. One of our saddest Christmas's ever. I love the holidays, cooking, decorating and shopping for everyone. We still had Kendra's Christmas presents under the tree. I gave the girls what they wanted to keep out of them, sent a few back and the rest we donated to her Bucket List Fun Run to be auctioned off. One present was a new pair of Converse tennis shoes, which she loved and that was the only shoes she wore practically besides flip flops, year round, rain or shine. She had a pair on when she died and her sisters each took one. So the new pair was donated to the auction and even though a good family friend bought the shoes, it made me want to cry. She should have opened those shoes on Christmas morning and she should have been wearing them. I sent back an IPod that she asked for so she could load on her favorite music and a big purse and new wallet. It was so hard to do this as I had just purchased them a few weeks prior in anticipation of seeing her face on Christmas morning as she opened them.
Yes, the anniversary dates are the hardest, because those days fill me with sorrow as I think about what we really lost and what could have been. We always say Kendra would have been doing this now or she would have loved this or said that. It's all the days in the future that we do not get to spend with her, the things she will never get to do. I really get sad when I think of all the things she doesn't get to do, like graduate college and go on to become an addiction counselor, see her kids grow, spend time with us and her sisters or grow older. She had so many dreams and they were lost and forgotten for a while, but she had them again and was so excited about the future.
Lastly, I have come to know very well that we are not promised tomorrow, so we need to live our lives fully each and every day. We need to live our lives in a way, that if we are not here tomorrow, we have done all we could here, lived as Christ calls us to live. So that when we come face to face with our Savior, he looks at us and says "Well done, my good and faithful servant". I do know that not all believe as I do and some have lost children and do not have that faith and comfort of knowing that they will see them again some day. So as long as I live, I will proclaim my faith and that even though I have had bad things happen in my life, I still say God is Good. He has never promised us that tragedy will not strike but he does promise to be there to hold us in his loving arms when it does.
No, grief is different for every person, we all do it in our own ways and no one way is right or wrong. Loving and losing someone is the hardest thing we have to endure on this earth. That is the price of love.
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