We miss our son. We're struggling with his loss. My husband made a comment that your supposed to miss him then move past that and move on. I wasn't offended by that. That's how everyone thinks loss and grief is supposed to be. If it were a parent or grandparent or someone whose lived a full life, then yes that's how things would work. The loss of a child, your own child however is much much different.
It's not even that you have your good days and your bad days. You have your good moments and your bad moments. Its a jumbled mess. It's not clean cut. It's sticky. It's messy. It's ugly. And just to really mess you up, sometimes your sad, happy and angry all at once and your not even sure why.
It's been 15 months and 1 week and 5 days exactly today that we've lost our little Liam. We have moments when we think we are going to be ok. Then we have moments that we aren't even sure our marriage will survive. It's not uncommon for couples to divorce or breakup after the loss of a child. Each person deals with the grief their own way and sometimes it's just much.
We seem to forget the fathers when we talk about the lose of a child. Everyone is always concerned about how the mother is doing that we often forget about the father. The one whose trying to keep his wife from shattering. The one who is trying to keep his family from falling apart. The one that goes back to work way before he's ready just to ensure his family has food to eat and to pay the bills while the mother is broken and unable to function. This takes a toll on them that they aren't willing to admit.
It weighs them down until they are so far under water that they might not be able to resurface for air. Then one day they reach a breaking point. They start questioning their beliefs, their marriage, their entire lives. If both aren't willing to fight to keep their marriage then it's crumble beneath them. They won't ask us for help but sometimes they need us to help pick up their pieces and put them back together again.
We know better than anyone else that tomorrow isn't promised. That feeling can make you feel like what your doing is not worth doing anymore. Your marriage not worth saving. Sometimes you just want to walk away from it all. You have to be willing to help each other pick up the pieces.
When Liam passed away I was so angry. I remembered what it felt like when he was born sick and I never wanted to feel that way again. I had been angry at God and blamed him. It took a lot of work and time to work through those feelings and get rid of them. When he passed away, I was scared I'd slip back into that. The way I saw it, I had two choices. 1) trust that God would get me through this and throw myself into church or 2) Be angry and walk away from him forever.
I chose to throw myself down at Gods feet and beg him to heal my broken soul. My broken heart. My husband was there for me when Liam was born and I was struggling with my faith. He wouldn't let me lose faith. He reminded me that it wasn't God doing that Liam was sick but that we had to keep our faith. Now he's struggling with his faith since Liam's passing. I could walk away and just focus on my own faith since it seems so fragile itself, but I can't. I need to be there for him and remind him how great our God us, like he did for me. I need to bring him back to God, like he did with me.
We are struggling but we are struggling together. Trying to hold onto what little shreds of our lives that we can.
"What is impossible with men, is possible with God"
Luke 18:27
