Survived

This has been a big blog day so far. Here's another story from #OCA. It's by Tracie Loux.

I'll never forget this line in Mattie's obituary:
"He is survived by father, John, mother, Tracie, brother and sister-in-law, Nick and Amy, brothers, Taylor and Aiden, and sisters, Isabelle, Elia, and Emma."

Survived.

He was gone, and we survived.

It didn't feel like survival. It felt like a crushing collapse of pain had settled on our family.

On August 21, 2014 (a year before your death!), I woke up, got my nails done, ran a few errands, and packed my bags for a weekend getaway... (description of 4-year-old Mattie's health problems which had improved recently)

As I was closing up the suitcase, Mattie's nurse gave me a call for us to come. We walked in to see our son's blue face...They quickly transferred him to the ambulance, where minutes down the road his heart stopped. I worked with two paramedics to help restore life to my son's limp body, but life woud not return.

My son was gone. My beautiful (blue-eyed) boy had slipped out of this life and into the next.

And we "survived" his death.

It has been almost a year and a half since his passing, and here we are. Surviving. We are the ones left behind. We outlived our son. Parents should never outlive a child. We are the ones who "continue to live in spite of danger or hardship" (guessing this is definition of survival), the ones who "continue to live in spite of" intense pain and grief.

I have learned that grief is as deep as love is wide, and that sorrow exists because of the power of love's impact on the world. I have learned that there is space in the human heart for joy and pain, peace and anger, hope and sadness, to all reside. And I have learned that to truly survive such unspeakable loss, we must allow ourselves to feel them each completely. I will survive because of Love. For this beast called Grief is not stronger than the power of Love.

I read this quote recently:

"Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place." -Rumi

I remember my raw, angry, grief-filled days. I remember feeling angry that the world kept spinning. I remember feeling like healing was impossible. Like I would be forever ruined. Quotes like this would make me scream inside, "How could anything GOOD come from this?"

I want you to know that healing exists. Sorrow is indeed violent. It has shaken my humanity to the core and has uprooted so much in my life. It doesn't feel good at all. It's uncomfortable, unsettling, terrifying at times.

But I made a choice one day, a choice to allow my heart to heal, a choice to cling to the beauty of my son's life, a spirit that is unquenchable, even in death.

And when I made that choice to seek joy, to invite the beauty of my son's spirit into every moment, I gave myself a gift-the chance to heal. Sorrow has indeed shaken so much from my heart: judgment, perfection, pressure to fit in, the weight of measuring up, impatience, and disdain. Sorrow is uprooting those things in my life and replacing them with patience, kindness, compassion, vulnerability, and a deep love for those who are broken and in pain.

As this new life comes in, as this joy appears, it does not replace the human soul that is missing from my life. It does, however, create a true connection to everything about him that was (and still is) pure beauty and joy.

So I choose to come alive again because love is stronger than death.

And forever, I love this boy.