I feel this so much more poignantly since the loss of our sweet boy Oliver. Since his passing, I seem to look at the world in such a completely different way.
Joy is magnified by a thousand. I bathe in the sound of Liam laughing. I breathe in the fresh, crisp winter air and just feel it in my lungs. I relish in all of the little things that make up my day...the smell of clean sheets, the way the windows shine after they are washed, how yummy iced cappuccinos truly are.
Sorrow is magnified by a thousand. I cried when I received my Parenting magazine in the mail yesterday and realized I no longer needed to flip right to the "pregnant" advice, or peruse the "newborn" advice section. I ache when I think of my good, good friends holding their new littles, and how empty my arms will feel. I pine for the day when I can see my baby again.
I took this as I was leaving for the hospital on the day before Ollie's birth. I can still feel how happy I was that I was going to spend the morning listening to my baby's heartbeat.
Joy, sorrow, happiness, pain, enlightenment, confusion....they combine in this wonderful tapestry of the human condition. These days it is hard to pinpoint what exactly I am feeling at any given moment. When people ask that question....the question that all the grief stricken get many, many times a day..."How are you doing?"...the most honest answer I have come up with is that is depends on the second in which you ask me. I may be sobbing and sobbing as I feel the loss of all the "what ifs/what woulds" (What color would Oliver's eyes have been? What would his voice have sounded like? What would it have felt like to see Oliver and Liam playing together? What would it have felt like to snuggle with both my boys on cold winter mornings? What if this is all just a bad dream? The list goes on and on and on), but as I sob, I am also smiling.
I smile because Oliver was here. He had weight in this world. I felt him. I knew him. I smile because he blessed us and I believe his life will continue to be a blessing. They say the Lord works in mysterious ways. Well, I have faith that he will find a way to work miracles through the life and death of my son. I may never know what these miracles were, but that is okay. I am planning to help God out on a few of them.
This post is a little bit of a rambling of my confused mind. But I guess the point is that YES, life sucks sometimes. Life is cruel, and unrelenting, and often makes us question what the freakin' point of it all is. But life is also SO, so beautiful, and purposeful, and filled with grace. It is NOT fair that I lost my son before he even had a chance to live, it is NOT fair that Liam will never get to meet his brother, it is NOT fair that my heart is broken, it is NOT fair that God chose Oliver to join him so soon.....but I am choosing, each minute of each day (sometimes not succeeding, but boy am I working on it!), to see the joy.
I am hoping that Oliver, in Heaven you are smiling too right now and that you can feel my love radiating up to you. XOXO Baby Boy!
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