My baby toe hangs out with the rest of my toes. Most of the time I don’t consider my baby toe. It is not an outstanding, necessary, appendage. At the same time it is not problematic but it is there ….it is a part of me, just like my big toe, my pinky, my ear lobe, my back molar, my grief……
My grief.
It is July.
And for those of you who have known me for a couple trips around the sun, you know that July is a complex, bittersweet month for me. I can be as testy as a cat on a hot tin roof or introspective and welcoming…..almost manic at times and under the covers the next.
Hello July.
To give myself grace……(a practice I have embraced lately), July saw the births and the deaths of my Littles- both Jack and Samantha. We ride for Children’s in July, we raise money in the name of our kiddos….it is a month. A month of Love and Loss.
What is grief if it is not Love and Loss?
And as time moves further from my loss, I struggle to find it’s place. And my place.
Yesterday our son would have been 16. I did not know Jack beyond the 9 months in my belly but I miss the wonder of who Jack could have been. Who he would have been had he time in this world.
The medical world says he would have been sick. Sick with mitochondrial disease. But we didn’t know that….in my wonder-world he could have been anything…..stinky, lippy, driving, tall….so tall given his genes. A great skier….
Amazing. I can wonder him as amazing. And so I do.
As the calendar turns to another July, 16 years have softened the loss. Time has weathered my response- there is nothing dramatic or catastrophic but the time must be recognized for me. For my Hubs. For our own relationship.
In 16 years, Grief is now a part of who I am and how I move through the world. It is not good or bad but my natural history. It is me….just like my baby toe or my pinky. It is not my whole lens of my eyesight but a part of my cornea that can dull or sharpen my perspective.
And like any body part, sometimes it needs attention.
Happy July Grief Baby Toe. I embrace you.
And Happy Birthday Jack….you amazing, tall, stinky, awesome skier. I miss who you could have been.
Samsmom 