Thoughts of the Day

After starting this blog, I can’t decide what to write. I am not sure anyone needs to know about my life, but I want to remember. I will just write whatever is on my mind. I hesitate to do that sometimes because I can be brutally honest and don’t realize it. I am sure there will be days I can actually write about an event or something a little more exciting.

However, today, almost six months after losing my Ethan I can’t seem to keep him off my mind. It’s probably the fact I had counseling yesterday, but maybe not. Thoughts and crying often come in spurts. I try to remain positive and know that my little guy is happy and doing important work and is surrounded by love that we can’t even imagine. However, that doesn’t always heal the heart and the hurt.

I was driving in my car the other day and just kept looking back in the van thinking I was missing someone. I am. I always will be missing him here on earth. That day in the van I counted my kids. I had all three. But, I must’ve looked back five or six times. It was a weird sensation. It made me miss Ethan a lot. There was never a car ride you didn’t realize he was in there. Usually he was loud and bouncing around the car when he was supposed to be buckled in. I also believe when soccer started for Madilyn it was bittersweet and kept him on the forefront of my mind. I LOVED watching Ethan play. He had such a passion for it, and he thought he was the best kicker. (He could kick it the length of the field.) He did want to be the kicker for the NE Patriots one day.

I can’t explain what its like to lose a child. I try, but unless you experience the pain you’ll never know. The same is true for a miscarriage. I remember I never used to think a miscarriage was a big deal until I had one. My second was even worse. They are a true loss. Now, losing a 7 year old is inexplicable. I didn’t ever think it wouldn’t be a big deal, but the hurt is new. It hurts and hurts, and that hurt doesn’t go away after a month or so like the miscarriage hurt did. With a miscarriage you don’t get to know and love your child everyday for 71/2 years. I think it will take at least 71/2 to start to not feel pain as deep. Although I know it’ll never leave.

I often wonder why we, as God’s children, have to endure pain like this. I think some pain is okay and I know others have A LOT more pain than I do. I know we have to know pain to know happiness. But, why? Think of the pain God endured and endures. Our goal is to be like Him. If I didn’t know this pain, could I be like Him? Could I be like God? I am sure I could learn to be like Him, however I should be grateful that He knows me well enough to know I need this to be the best I can be. I wish I could change that, but know I agreed to it previously. These are thoughts and questions I bounce around my head a lot trying to grasp my situation.

I often explain this past year of my life as “weird.” Losing Ethan and gaining Brady is just “weird’. My life completely changed in the last six months. I have a different family to take care of here, I am not working full time anymore and we spend a lot of time going to counseling. I do counseling because I think anything helps, so we continue. My mind cannot, and I don’t ever will, completely wrap around the fact that Ethan died. He is dead. I tell myself that to remind myself to cry and remember him. I think because his spirit lives on, it just doesn’t seem real. I am not sure it will ever seem real. It just is. We’ll see him in the future and in the meantime we need to be as happy as we can because that is what he would want. He was always happy (unless he was in trouble—which was often as well).