It’s almost “that time of year”….for the first time. Some days, it’s almost surreal walking through life remembering the things I was doing at this time last year. Serving at the Valentine’s banquet in Cambria this year, I felt useful and energetic. Last year, that trip marked my 20th week of pregnancy and the start of much discomfort. Every one of Parker’s baseball games this season is an eerie flashback to the activity that seemed to keep me going in those final weeks of pain and immobility. Last spring, we were preparing our home and a special room for a new baby. This spring, we have finally packed away all of Turner’s things.
I look toward May 15th with a combination of eager anticipation and dread. This one-year anniversary seems so much more significant than I could ever put words to. And so complex. And even contradictory. Part of me fears that it will bring pressure and expectations to be “all better.” Part of me senses it will offer the freedom and permission to be “all better.”
Many people have said that things are markedly easier after the first year of losing someone you love. That you come to some form of acceptance, which sometimes seems to be the end goal of grief ( if there is such a thing). I used to think that acceptance meant a reinstatement of normal, a return to the way things used to be. But now I find acceptance means satisfaction with the place we have traveled to. Not a begrudging compliance with but a peaceful embracing of our new reality. It’s an acceptance of a situation, but also of the plain fact that life is now a little sadder, a little more solemn, a little more sober than it used to be. And so are we.
I don’t know where I’ll be on May 15, 2011. I know where I was on May 15, 2010, and I know where I am today. And I know that God has specifically used May 15, 2010 to get me where I am today. He has used that single day to affect my life in every area more than any other day in the last thirty years. And I know He’ll keep using it. So stay tuned! I know I will.
A journey out of darkness into marvelous light 
Apr 01, 2011 @ 05:54:01
Thanks for sharing your journey. It is so comforting to know there are others wrestling with the tough things in life and yet continuing to cling to God.
Apr 01, 2011 @ 07:08:03
Lyss as always your journey is amazing, sad, encouraging, life altering and since none of us can take away your pain and loss we greive for you and with you. You are so loved, you and your family. I hope you know that if you ever need ANYTHING you can call on me, and I mean for ANYTHING.