October Secret Garden Meeting

This meeting we would like to talk about where you are. Where are you at in your grief. Has it been years or just weeks since you lost your baby. How are you feeling. How do you hope you will feel in the future. Have you found any peace at all?

It has been 6 1/2 months since we lost Chase. I still have a lot of the same feelings, most all of them, that I did a week after he died. I am still angry, lost, confused, bitter (maybe not as much now), sad, empty, broken, just sick. If I let myself, I could go right back to the moment it happened, or the funeral, or the burial, and have all those wicked, horirble feelings just like I was there again. I don't let myself, though. There are times that I just don't let myself think of because it is so awful. I guess because there are moments that I can think of to cover those up. Like the first moment I saw him and how I instantly (INSTANTLY) bonded with him. Or touching him in the NICU and spending that precious time with him. Or when the kids came in to see him and they were all so, so, so strong. Or when we all talk about him and wonder what he is doing now, or what or who he looks like, or what his likes and dislikes are. My thoughts are my choice, I figure. I can think about whatever I want to think about and I can turn them into good or bad (sad) thoughts. I am really trying to make the best of it.

I am doing well. Not great. Not terrible. Things could be better (the obvious), but they never will be. We still have our dreams. They are altered a little tiny bit, but we still have them. We are trying to decide what our family is going to be or become. We are forever learning how to live without a very important part of our family. I don't know if you ever figure that out. With the holidays approaching, I have thought a lot about our traditions...what the were, what they are going to be. The fact is that there is sadness, everywhere we go, everything we do surrounded by utter, complete, happiness. My family is the most awesome thing in the world. i am so lucky to be a part of it. They are wonderful. I love them and they love me. More than anything. It's so complicated to have so much joy in life yet to have sadness present all the time. I miss Chase...as an infant....and now as a 6-month-old. I miss him and the things he would be doing. All his firsts. But I also love what I have. I am so lucky to have what I have. So lucky. And thank you, Chase, if you had anything to do with that. I don't want to think that you did, but I also know that you did and love you for it. I want to think like Carly....Are you really gone? Or is it that we just can't see you?