I stumbled upon this photo today. I was looking for a different one.
When I saw it, I cried.
They look so worried, so sure that the world was an uneven, unbalanced place.
It was then. (It still is but I am trying to ease myself into that fact.)
I had been in the hospital all day with Art.
The next day I would call friends who would gather them from school and bring them to the hospital where I would tell them one at a time, "Your father is dying."
When I look back on all this grief, there is one place that I never like to touch, one place where the rawness never seems to heal.
I could not protect them from loss. Nothing has made me, or still makes me feel so small or useless or powerless. Nothing has made me question the purpose of motherhood more.
At that moment, when I told them, when I accompanied each one in to say good-bye I knew I was doing the right thing, but the pain from doing that is something I had not visited till I saw this photo.
This photo was taken 4 days before Art died. The innocence is still in their eyes.
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I stop crying and download this photo to my phone.
It is here I remember how resilient we all are.
The juxtaposition of your two different photos is very powerful and they provide a very concrete example of how resilient children can be. I know that in our house I often marvel at how the boys are dealing with the loss of their Dad while I'm not coping as well. And while loss is an overwhelming lesson to have to learn at such young ages, sadly it is a powerful life lesson. I'm choosing to believe that the compassion, the empathy and the sense of life's fragility that my children have gained since losing their Dad will serve them well in their life. For sure they will be different people than they would have been if their Dad hadn't died but hopefully they'll be even better human beings. I guess I have to believe that our children will in the end reap some kind of life benefit from having to go through this hell. Is that too much wishful thinking?
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