Sully would have been eight...

February 4th, 2016 - sixteen - wow - it's been 8 years. Not a day has gone by that I do not think of Sully. A few friends have been checking in on me this week which I always appreciate. I'm honest with them. I'm low, as is usual during this season. I let myself be low. I've learned to slow everything down, to block the calendar, to retreat. We take the day off every year as a family. We take balloons to his playground, buy tulips, make cake, go on an adventure together. And, as sad as it all is, I truly love this day. It feels like the one day a year where I let myself stop. I put no expectations on myself, no pressures to be or look or feel a certain way. I just am. I hug my kids all day and sit as close to them as I can. I don't snap at myself or Brad or the kids for running late or needing to get chores done. I just exist. And it is so lovely. I told my friend that this was one of Sully's greatest to me. She remarked that it was certainly a positive way to look at it. Yes, it is. And that's when I understood that this is how I have to choose to live all of my life, taking the stories, the sadness, and shifting the way we look at it. I think of Victor Frankl's writings and him espousing after having survived the Holocaust this beautiful reality. "Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

In the past five years since I posted here, I did write a good bit more. At the five year anniversary I privately wrote to myself in response to me on this blog as I lived through each day. It was raw and unfiltered and therapeutic. Since then, I have gone on to full time employment, begun graduate school, sent my kids to school full time after five years of homeschooling, and, just this last year, we moved. For years I couldn't move, didn't want to move. I didn't want to leave my home where I had brought all my babies, where I had brought my Sully home. I marvel at how time shifts and shapes our hearts and minds. With time, I've been able to - what is it - not let go - but, understand that my heart is Sully's home. Him coming to me shaped me more than any other event in my life so far, and I see how that experience, my loving him and carrying him, and, yes, losing him, is a part of the fabric of me now. I know I can't go anywhere without him because he is in the very core of who I am. Still, I am a sentimental fool, and I couldn't bring myself to sell the house yet. Just this weekend we went and did yard work in preparation for renters, and I just loved being there. I love that home, and I love the stories we chose to write in that space.

All the house is quiet still and it is well past the time we all would have been off to school and work. I look out my new windows and see all kinds of birds swooping and flying in and out of a holly bush by the river. I am thankful for the peacefulness of this moment and the ritual of this day that awaits me. Happy Birthday, Sully, my sweet boy.

Three years later

Tomorrow marks Sully's third birthday. I stopped at his playground tonight on my way home from rehearsal. I let my hand brush over the rosemary that shot up over his sign, "sully's playground". I breathed in deeply that pungent scent and placed a kiss on my fingers and then on the little etched bird. Rosemary for remembrance. I remember you baby boy. I can feel the weeping mother opening up the door and walking through my heart, my emotions, my memory. I sat on the bench and sobbed.

Everyone has pain. Everyone has some ache that their heart hides. But why this ache in my life? Why a dead child? I still am asking that, three years later.

Tomorrow we are taking a reprieve from the world. Brad is off work, the kids will not have school. We aren't planning on interacting with anyone, just us, just a day to be together as a family and celebrate and mourn our Sully. We've planned eating and cake making, family presents, board games and movies. We'll look through his pictures and watch our home films. We'll take balloons to the playground and play together there. We want to go to Edmarc and touch his name plate placed there with so many other children who left broken hearted families. We are not alone in our grief.

I was once told that we are what we celebrate, that our children learn from what we celebrate. I want to celebrate my boy. I want my other children to remember that we celebrated his life every year. Maybe, as we all grow older and eventually live apart, his birthday will always be a reason for us to gather back together again. I would like that. So, even if it is through tears, I've put up my Sully flag and I've made hearts bloom out of all our windows. I will hold my little ones a bit tighter and breath a deep breath. I want to embrace and celebrate all that Sully taught me, embrace the beauty of the smallest of lives, the joy and pain of six days, of being in the moment and no where else. I love you, Sully, my forever Valentine.

Brand New Day

Brad put this song by Joshua Radin on the last cd he made for me and the kids. I listen to it over and over and smile because I feel like it's a song for me and our family. A Brand New Day...

Some kind of magic
Happens late at night
When the moon smiles down on me
And bathes me in it’s light

I fell asleep beneath you
In the tall blades of grass
When I woke the world was new
I never had to ask

It’s a brand new day
The sun is shinning
It’s a brand new day
For the first time
In such a long long time
I know
I’ll be ok

Most kind of stories
Save the best part for last
Most stories have a hero who finds
You make your past your past
Ya you make your past your past

It’s a brand new day
The sun is shinning
It’s a brand new day
For the first time
In such a long long time
I know
I’ll be ok

This cycle never ends
Gotta fall in order to mend

And it’s a brand new day
It’s a brand new day
For the first time
In such a long long time
I know
I’ll be ok

A special day, Jasper's baptism

The fourth trimester

Jasper turned 12 weeks old yesterday. We have officially finished our fourth trimester. Brad and I first heard this term after having Zane, our first son, and we have hung on to it because it makes so much sense of the chaos and sleeplessness and lack of life pattern that follows the weeks after a baby is born. It has helped us to not try and think of those weeks as if they should be normal but rather like we are still in the "pregnant" phase, giving ourselves grace to just fall apart instead of trying to get it together.

And, true to 12 week old form, Jasper is finally starting to sleep longer stretches through the night. Last night he only woke me up once! I guess it goes to show that babies do what babies need to do. I worried so much with my first that if I held her to much she wouldn't sleep. But, this round, there has never been a baby that was held more in his first three months of life and here he is sleeping in his crib at night just like the first. As wonderful as it is to have him, there truly is relief in finally sleeping a bit more! I am feeling once again more like myself and not quite as hormonal. And having Jasper truly is like a balm to my wounded heart.

Ah, my heart, it does still ache and I am coming to accept that it may never go away. I mostly live each day pushing my mind away from very focused thoughts of last year. But then it will hit me and knock me down again. As I sorted through my clothes, shedding the maternity and larger items, I fumbled across the white sweater I wore to Sully's service and it all flooded back to me. The tears blurred my vision and made me stop my project. A million times I will walk by Sully's little hand and foot prints on our wall. Then, for some reason, I stop one time and just stare and them and think that his flesh once made those impressions. I feel my breath catch and I'm paralyzed again by the tears. On vacation, I heard Oh Heavenly Day come up on our ipod, and I just sobbed as I held Jasper even tighter to me. What I realize is that I hope these moments always catch me through out the rest of my life. Even if it hurts, it still is a connection to my son, a reminder of the love that changed me immeasurably.




Lake Jocassee, Devil's Fork State Park, South Carolina

What's in a name?

Jasper Keats. I waffled on his name after he was born wondering if he should have been given his brother's name in honor of him. After much consideration, Brad and I decided that this little guy should have his own name and that we could always honor and remember Sully in other ways. As the days carry on I see more clearly how Japser's name and it's meaning is the right one for him.

Jasper means guardian or treasurer. Keats can mean poetic or also it can mean melancholy. I questioned using a name that could mean sadness but it's the two names together that take on significance for me. This little wonder in my arms I have named the guardian of the sadness, the treasurer or keeper of the poetry. As I talk to him and hold him against my chest I feel how much he is keeping the sadness at bay, how much his arrival has begun to heal my wounded heart. The gift of Jasper to our family is like a salve for us all. I often wonder where I would have ended up had this little guy not also been a part of our story. The bitterness and angst is still inside but would it have festered uncontrollably had my arms always been left empty? I don't know. Having Jasper without a doubt has helped me to once again see the beauty of life, it's poetry. And, strangely enough, even though so much pain came along with Sully, he also brought such a depth of feeling and "poetry" if you will. Sully's story will always be a part of Jasper's and so, he is rightly named the "keeper of the poetic". He is such a dear little baby, so hearty, so happy. He gives us so much joy, my Jasper Keats.

Easter Sunday

We made it to church this week. It took a great amount of effort but we both knew we wanted to make it there for Easter. I knew I probably wouldn't be able to pay attention to the majority of the service with tending to a newborn or walking out with him when I needed, but, still, there was something to just sitting in that back pew. It, of course, brought back so many memories of the Sunday we took Sully to church. Now, a year and a few months later we were back in that same spot, sitting with the same dear friends, with an infant in a car seat. Yet how much has changed. As the service ended and the congregation sang Amazing Grace I felt the tears well up in my eyes and stream down my cheeks. There is such joy in holding Jasper and yet still such a rawness inside of me, a wounded faith as I described it to a friend the other day. I recognize that I still have so many questions and yet, in those moments of singing that old hymn, I knew that despite my faith being shaken to its bare bones, it is, in deed, still in tact. I do still believe that one day I will know my Sully again. This Sunday is such a celebratory one because I do believe in the resurrection and all that it means for me and for my son and for my family.