Capture Your Grief - Day 30 - My Promise to You

"I made a promise to my son a few years ago to live my life to the fullest in honour of him. I have succeeded and failed at that promise many time but what matters most is that it has helped me to hold onto love when there is only darkness and to always try my best to make him proud of me. What promise would you like to make to your child?"
Abigail,

I'm not sure that I've ever sat down and really written or thought about this.  I know since you died I've had a number of things I've intended to do better.  Some of them I've had some success with, and some not so much.  I wrote a little about it on Day 2 last year.  Last night, I boxed up your things, for our upcoming move.  I can't tell you how painful that was.  It felt like burying you all over again.  And it came up out of nowhere.  I didn't tape up the box last night, but really I need to today, this is a little ridiculous.  Not that telling myself that changes the way that I feel.

I promise to be a better Momma to your siblings.  More patient and less crazy.  While there is so much room for improvement, I feel like I've made huge strides in that area in the last year.  I try to stop and think about their day and what's going on before I start fussing.  I try to be empathetic not just harsh over their failures.  I have made more of a point, to not yell at them, because I'm frustrated and mad about their behavior, something I had been trying to work on for years before our loss, but take more time to let them and me cool down, and then talk about why the behavior isn't God honoring.  I'm trying to find more time to build with them, play games with them, and not just be constantly cleaning and doing.  I hope to improve in that area more, as we move into our own house a smaller house, and really consider what we bring into it.

I promise to keep your memory alive.  To never forget that we have a daughter, that we don't see.  That your younger sibling will know you were here.  Not that we will tell him (or her) when he's grown, as if it's all been some big shameful secret, but that you remain a part of our family that we remember and talk about often.

And I promise to better watch my health, and to be proactive with it from now on, that we will never experience another loss due to negligence again.

I love you, and still wait for the day we will meet.

Love,
Momma

(I'm swapping today's topic with tomorrow's since I'm not leaving the house today.)

Capture Your Grief - Day 28 - Self Compassion

"Self Compassion is integral to healing your broken heart. You can start to practice more self compassion by showing yourself a little more love and care. Do you have any self-care practices? What are your thoughts on taking care of yourself."

This is another hard one.  The truth of the matter is that I probably should take out some time on a consistent basis, to get out of the house without the kid.  The year we lived in Gainesville, the biggest life saver in the insanity that was no job, a toddler, a new born, and Gary's insane school schedule - was that every two or three weeks, I took a book and went to Chickfila.  Sometimes I got lunch, sometimes I just came up there and sat there and drank water.  I just had to get out of the house.  I'd go in the afternoon after Gary was done with classes, in between lunch and supper rush, so that I wouldn't be a bother to sit there for up to an hour.

I need to take more time to myself.  I wake up to someone climbing on me asking for food most mornings, we clean, we do school, sometimes we have a little down time right before time to start supper and Gary to come home.  Then it's like pulling hair to get kids to eat, get them to bed.  It's exhausting, and too many days in a row with no break leaves me frazzled and short tempered.  There were times early on, I will confess that I resented the kids always being there.  I had no ability to just grieve and cry in the bed all day.  People still wanted to eat, three times a day.  Oh my goodness!  Why is everyone always hungry?

I try to snag a few minutes here and there, mostly after bedtime to color and de-stress, or journal, or do some weekly planning in my planner.  But it's an area that really needs some improvement.  And I think aside from the benefits to my patience level, it's would be good for the kids to know that everything in my world DOES NOT revolve around them.  I think sometimes, they don't get that reality check, and it's not good for their attitudes.

Capture Your Grief - Day 27 - Family is Forever

So, a couple of days ago, while in the car, I had pulled out the old Alabama cd.  Britt's been asking for it for several weeks, and I never seem to remember to get it out when we are at home.  Gary looked in the rearview mirror, and informed me that Rebecca must get her aweful dance moves from me.  I told him that we'd settle this once and for all.  Mother tell him that I didn't look a think like this nut.

Capture Your Grief - Day 26 - #WhatHealsYou

This one is always hard to me.  I still ask Why sometimes.  I have found things that help, mainly writing - whether that's blogging, journaling in my book about Abigail, or just daily journaling and record keeping.  I also have found that the adult coloring books have been good for me.  It's a good stress relief, lets me get my mind on positive things.  And spend some time talking to God.  It's something I can pick up for a few minutes just about any time of day.  Whether that's while I'm sitting waiting for the other kids to finish math problems.  Or after supper on the couch while Gary watches tv.  Here's a current project I just started working on.

Once we reached the top of the mountain the craziness started...

We was hiking up Crazy Mountain, and when we got to the top, we saw lots of crazy things.  I comed with one person, named Britt.  My name is Ruth.  The first crazy thing we saw was a T-Rex playing a fiddle.    Next, we saw talking gummies (bears).  Next, we saw a frog on a fan.  And next, we saw an Anklysaurus singing a song.  And then, we saw a snake whipping a palm tree with it's tail, and the palm tree was saying, "Stop that!"  And then, the T-Rex started to read a book.  Then a Pleiosaurus started eating flowers.  Then the dinosaurs started asking us crazy things.  I decided if we didn't start acting crazy they'd never let us get off Crazy Mountain.  Britt and Ruth was woofing like a dog, to pretend they were crazy so we could get away from crazy mountain.  When the T-Rex, and everything was sleeping, Britt and Ruth snuck away.  They lived happily ever after.  The End.

When my time machine broke, I was stranded in the age of the dinosaurs...

I built a time machine, it scanned the dinosaur egg that turned into a rock, so off we went.  But something was wrong, and none of my stuff, and especially my food couldn't come with me.  Then I fell in the Cretaceous Period, in a big pond and went splash in the water.  I was fine, but I knew I wouldn't be for long if I stayed there.  I started walking, when I saw one T-Rex and one Triceratops battling.  The Triceratops started getting tired, so he started running away, but the T-Rex couldn't catch him.  Just then he smelled me, and started chasing me.  I knew I was in trouble.  I grabbed a vine and swung up into a tree where he couldn't reach me.  And you know, that they can't climb with their tiny little arms.  I stayed there, and I was safe, but I started getting hungry.  So, I saw an egg that hatched.  It was a little T-Rex.  I left it, but instead of it leaving me alone, it kept following me.  Even when I said go away.  I finally found another egg, and it wasn't hatching, so I boiled it, after I made a fire with some sticks.  Then I saw a straight piece of metal that was super shiny and clean.  I stuck it with the egg, and boiled it, to eat it.  I couldn't fish like a bear, so then I used the metal stick to catch the fish.  Then I cooked it over the fire, took the scales off and cooked it a little more before I ate it.  I was all full.  But then there was a big BOOM, BOOM, ARRUUUUUUU.  It roared, and I knew that roar anywhere.  It was a T-Rex, the same T-Rex, and it was battling a whole herd of Triceratops.  But the T-Rex grabbed the frill of one Triceratops, and hit the rest with his tail.  Then he threw the first one on top of the others.  He some how beat them all, and ate one of them.  By then it was night so he curled up to sleep.  I looked at my little T-Rex, and I knew I couldn't bring a dinosaur back to my time.  I started back after he went to sleep too, and I saw a Brachiosaurus, she was going to his nest.  She went to sleep in her nest with her baby and her husband.  Then I went to sleep.

The next morning I saw a Brachiosaurus running away from a troop of Velociraptors.  But then I saw a Velociraptor about to cling on, when the Brachiosaurus used his whip tail on him.  All the others ran away.  But they had taken out her husband and most of the herd.  All that was left was her baby.  Then a T-Rex came and started battling the Brachiosaurus, but when she hit him hard in the face he turned into a card. ("What?" I asked.  "Come on Momma, this is a made up story he replied.")  I grabbed the T-Rex card but there was one thing that surprised me.  It was still with me - my special watch.  So when I used the card, and matched it up with my watch, the T-Rex came out of the card.  Opps.  So I put it back in the card.  I put him in my pocket and started walking.  I thought I could use him to hunt for me.  Before you could say, "A mouse in pickles" there was a real big fire in the woods.  I knew I was in the same woods.  Instead of jumping over the fire.  I decided to use my T-Rex.  I got on his back, since he could step over the flames.  We got out of the forest, but then we all needed a bath, me the T-Rex, and the baby that had caught back up to me.  So I got out of my clothes and took a bath in the pond.  After my bath, I got dressed again.

Over the next several days, I managed to get all the dinosaur cards, in every period.  So then I had to match up one of the cards from each period.  I used a T-Rex for the Cretaceous, I used Parasarlopholus, Carnisaurus, and one more a Brachiosaurus.  I was able to come home, and that's how I became Paleontologist Britt!

Capture Your Grief - Day 25 - I Am

I wish ________________________
I wish I could spend the day with Abigail.  To see who she is, to watch her with her siblings.  To ask her about heaven and the glory and presence of Christ.


I remember _______________________

Capture Your Grief - Day 24 - Conscientiously Becoming

"So many of us split our lives into a timeline of before and after our children died. Who were you before your children died? Who are you now? Who are you now in this present moment? What are you feeling? Have you been irrevocably changed by the death of your children? How are you different now? Do you love anything about the new you? Do you want any old part of you back? Who are you becoming?"

(picture courtesy of Britt)

Capture Your Grief - Day 23 - Sounds, Seasons + Scents

Capture Your Grief - Day 22 - Pearls of Wisdom

Rebecca is getting to be a bit of an artist.  She sat down on Tuesday and decided to draw a picture of her family.  I labelled all the people.  And asked her about what she drew.  She has buttons on Daddy's shirt, and he has on shorts.  The dots under the circles are noses, and the lines or smushed circles are smiles, "cause we have different smiles."  We had looked at this really cool book I've bought "A Child is Born" and I had showed them how a 8 week old baby has a big head, but still is kinda a C shape, so all on her own, she drew a C shaped baby.  And she put Abigail beside her, because "she's next after me."  She made her big like her because "I think she's big like me."  What I was most impressed with was her name.  When I sit down and tell her exactly how to write her name, her handwriting is amazing.  We go through it like this - for your R you have to draw a stick, then a bump with a kick, and then for an e, we make a belt and make a C around it.  If you look at the very bottom, without any help she wrote her name REccA, her c looks like an o, but she insist it wasn't, she just messed up a little.  She scribbled something before the A because she said, "I forgot what else was in there."  I continue to be so impressed with her "school work" this year.  She's only got one assignment left in her letter book, and she will have used up all of her preschool books.  I suppose I'll have to think about what to do after Christmas with her schooling.  I really didn't intend to start this year or next with her.  She had other ideas.

Capture Your Grief - Day 21 - Relationships

Capture Your Grief - Day 20 - Gratitude

My pet invisible elephant is super quiet, and Momma cannot hear it.  My invisible elephant lives outside so it doesn't wreck anything when Momma is asleep.  And at day, I play with my invisible elephant, we play Go Fish and Bean Bag Toss.  And at night, I give the elephant one barrel of peanuts before her goes to bed.  Her is an elephant with a super pretty, fancy saddle on her back.  And her also a fancy thing on her trunk.  When I ride on her saddle, I like to throw out flowers.  And some people ride horses beside my pet elephant.  And the crowd is beside all of that.  Then giraffes comed and then people was throwing them hats in the air.  It was a huge parade.  The End.

Capture Your Grief - Day 19 - Grief Rituals

Capture Your Grief - Day 18 - Healing Therapies

In the first few months after our loss I read alot, but mostly I have written alot. For me it has been the best way to remember, process, and begin to heal. Now at a year out, I have begun to wonder what to do with those writings, and where to go from here. For today's post I took a picture of my desk with my planners, journals, blogs, everywhere I have been writing for the last year.

Capture Your Grief - Day 17 - Sacred Space

10-16, Moon through the palms.

Capture Your Grief - Day 15 - Wave of Light

"October 15th Wave of Light is a very significant day of remembrance and awareness of our community calendar. At 7pm you are invited to light a candle to honour and remember all of the babies and children who have died. If everyone does this, there will be a continuous wave of light around the world for 24 hours. Share your candles and children with the world."