Living with Loss

Death is Just a Thing The summer sun shines on me with a brilliance that warms my bones, but my heart is lonely for the ones who have gone. My ears long to hear their words. My eyes to linger upon their beauty. But only memories remain, some blurring with the sand and the wind. Time marches on… Death is just a thing that happens in the wind. Hold the memories of love’s last words, A silent moment or a ruckus laugh. A giant hug or kiss on the cheek. Whatever it was, that moment shared, tuck it deep within your heart. For time will pass and take its toll, but love will last beyond death’s sting and shine within the memories we sing. 4.21.17 mw lambeth

A father and daughter were commissioned today to go forth to Cuba to share the gifts of Christ through their music ministry. I saw them standing there together and was struck by how fortunate they were to be able to share this experience; that the father took time to purposely engage in life with his child. It’s difficult in our busy lives to put aside the obligations of the day and commit to being actively engaged in our child’s life. We want to left life go along like a predictable Swiss train. No worries, no real problems, children just need food and water and a little attention, then they will go on by themselves as we watch quietly from the station. But it doesn’t happen that way. Life assaults us with pebbles, rocks and boulders….denting the shiny exterior of our predictable Swiss train, sometimes even causing it to stop. It is our commitment to sharing time with our children and the gifts that result from that time that sustain us in strife and sorrow. I watched the...

I was going through some things today, cleaning and organizing. At first, it was fine; after a while, it broke me. Being a bereaved parent it's difficult to do most any task that involves pieces of the past and not have it conjure an emotional response. Frankly, my emotions can spark with the most mundane and benign thing; it does not have to relate to Wyatt to strike the proverbial chord, but today it was. Nothing dramatic, not photos, videos or audios, I was going through some Christmas cards we received from the year after Wyatt's death. I got through about one third of them when it hit me and thrust me to the floor in heaves of nausea and screaming through the tears. I began to wail and sob and ache at the absence of my child. It can't be, it simply can't be. But, it is. After a while, the wave of sorrow and sickness subsided so I could continue with my task, I laid down amid the various papers and books and began to look through them. I found...

T ime turns differently for the mother of a dead child.  Time is slower, much slower, more methodical in it's forward motion. I can sit for an hour and have hundreds of amazing thoughts rush across my mind, and then, just as quickly forget all the fantastic beauty of each of them. Recalling maybe one very simple and mundane task, something like I should boil an egg for breakfast.  Everything takes more out of you when you're the mother of a dead child. This world alive with children, children's activities, children's toys, and children's accomplishments is a playground rife with danger for the mother of a dead child. Breathing in the life of the rest of the world's child-filled lives somehow makes each breath a little heavier and laced with the acerbic taste of emptiness. There is not one thing in life I can do and not be confronted with children and shown the magnificent abundance of having a child in your life and yet simultaneou...