Seven years in, still moving forward

Matthew

 It’s been seven years. It will always be hard to forget what a horrible day that November 19 was. I told the kids this morning that you are watching over us. I hope that you are. We live all the way over here in Phoenix, Arizona now. We live across the street from Matthew Drive. It’s far from where life was with you for so long. But I know you are with us still.

The kids have grown so much. Your son is getting ready to graduate high school and he’s about to drive that silver Mustang out and away into the real world and I’m not sure how I’m going to handle it. Your twins are nearing 15 and are the prettiest things I could have ever imagined (seriously because I remember when Mia came out and she looked like a tiny, drowned rat). And Payton, our baby, is the funniest person in the house. If she wasn’t such an introvert like you, she could be a comedian. Life with them is busy and hurried. Practices and games, school functions and everything in between. 

While the older three go to school together in their brother’s car, I still get the morning drop off and afternoon pickup with Payton at her school. The other day I watched a dad in the parking lot getting his three little kids into the car and buckling them up. I know it’s been seven years now, but there are moments like this that catch me off guard, allowing that grief to seep back in. It manifests sometimes as envy for what others still have that was taken from me. It also comes as sadness for what my children never got. And sometimes it comes as thankfulness—a reminder of what I was lucky enough to have for just a short time. 

After school drop off this morning, I went into the church to say a prayer for you and to write your name in a book of remembrance they have at the front of church. I know nobody even looks in that book, but it makes me feel good to write your name down again. I had on your old blue Kentucky sweatshirt and a stranger approached me in the narthex and told me he went to UK. Small world. Even all the way out here, I still get bits and pieces of you from life in Kentucky. The church here has a prayer grotto, similar to the grotto at Notre Dame, where we took pictures with our wedding party the day we got married there. I tried to light a candle for you today but there were no candles left to light and I didn’t want to blow out someone else’s dead person’s candle. So I just said a prayer for you, that you are safe and healthy in heaven but that you still have time to watch over us. I pray for the patience that you had and for an ounce of the kindness you always gave to other people. 

I am still with Chris, who is an amazing addition to my life and he loves your kids so much. I’m lucky I found someone who genuinely cares about my children as if they were his own. I am pretty sure he loves them more than he loves me. I think you’d be ok with that. We are getting ready next week to celebrate your favorite holiday. I will never know a Thanksgiving without thinking about how much you loved family gatherings, and turkey, stuffing, gravy and ALL the pies. 

Years ago, a widow named Nora McInerny said, “we don’t move on from grief, we move forward with it.”

And nothing has ever resonated more with me in the last seven years.

Life continues. Life goes on. Our resilient kids are happy and healthy and thriving. I taxi them around in this car with today’s date on my plate, doing the best I can as mom to your amazing kids.

 

On Nov. 19, 2017, I lost something so great that I never thought anything would ever be ok again. Yes, we still miss you terribly. We wish you were here. Not many people know how it feels to exist with a hole in your heart. But here we are, doing it, persevering despite it. Nov. 19 was a horrible day seven years ago. But today and every day I’ll keep moving forward.