Up here in Canada we just celebrated Thanksgiving weekend. My mom, Mike's bro and wife, another friend visiting from Germany, and Mike's mom and dad as well as our kids were here for dinner tonight. It was a nice time with family. It was good. Really good.
The kids made 'thankful pumpkins'. We also wrote out on the chalkboard things we were thankful for. It was a preciour time and I'm thankful we had that time together.
Mike's dad often visits us and is usually melancholy or sad. This is why: Mike's mom has very advanced Parkinson's disease and recently moved into a care facility. This has left Mike's dad lonely without his life partner of the last 50 years. Today was a happy day for him. He brought his bride with him to Thanksgiving dinner at our house. I could tell he was just so happy to have his wife and both sons and most of the grandkids around him at the same time. We took a picture of Grandpa and Grandma and the grandkids (Samuel held a photo of Eva).
I thought how amazing it would be if I could have just one day with my Eva. I watched my father in law's happy face and I thought about how I would be just beaming if Eva could join us too.
I was also told today about some negative aspects of my personality. It is just such a piss off how people can be so nicey-nice to my face but then be such gossipers behind my back.
Most of the time I'm glad my friends and family read this blog (not always, but they do). Once in awhile I wish I knew it was just bereaved parents who read it. Bereaved parents who totally get how all-encompassing the missing of my child is. That I can't just stop mentioning her. That missing her won't 'wear off'. That I don't even want it to wear off. That lighting a candle for her at Thanksgiving dinner is never going to stop. That if it bothers them for me to talk about my daughter who is dead, well, how much worse is it for me. Because, for me, it never never never goes away. She's always dead and I'm always here without her.
It never stops.
So you, with your opinions about me, keep em to yourself until you've held your dead child in your arms. And if that day, God forbid, ever comes then I'll hold your hand as you weep. I'll listen to your rage, anger, bitterness, grief, regrets...and how no one understands you anymore. Because I've walked that road.
And unless you've travelled the road I'm walking on ahead of me, or with me, or behind me then, please, don't even attempt to tell me you know how my shoes feel.
Well said.
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