Traveling with Grief
Traveling with grief seems to create an exponentially heavier load to carry that when we simply continue our daily lives and stick with the mundane.
We left this week for a 2 week family vacation across the Midwest to Oregon with some solid family time planned for our 8. I maneuvered all of the packing, organizing and coordinating all of the things that the 8 of us would need over the span of the last two weeks with such ease, that I even surprised myself.
I labeled boxes and created to do lists, including a list of the few grocery items we would need to pick up once we reached our first destination in Wyoming. I had kids clothes organized in plastic bags, including an extra outfit laid out for just in case, as well as a swim suit for everyone.
Finally, the van was packed, kids were in their seats, anticipation and excitement was overflowing. The volume with which the kids were rapidly talking matched everyone’s excitement about what they would see and do.
We were ready and we almost pulled out of the driveway, when I asked Jay if I could run back inside quick. I realized I didn’t have one of my Molly necklaces on and the very idea of leaving her special urn box (made by her uncles, Grampa, dad and brothers) brought hot tears to my eyes.
Grief was pounding at the door and my heart was not ready for such a raw moment mixed in with so much excitement. This family trip is the first big, long trip we’ve taken since adding the twins and Molly to our crew. We’d been planning it for so long, that I never thought about how I would feel leaving. I focused solely on where we were going, what we would be doing and everything else wrapped up in our destination and journey.
Hot tears ran down my cheeks as we turned away from our farmhouse and began crawling west towards our first stop in the mountains. The grief didn’t subside. The grief didn’t leave. I’ve become friends enough with my grief to simply invite it into the space that I live in. Allowing myself to feel sadness and a sense that Molly was missing out on something so special was necessary for this vacation to begin. It’s a hard part of living with grief, yet it often makes special memories have an even more permanent, vivid place in my memory because I want all the little things to matter.
2 years of missing Molly Mae is rapidly approaching and the biggest desire and tug for this continually grieving heart of mine, is that I will always make space for the sadness. It is in those spaces that I find the richest, fullest moments of love within our beautiful family. When we embrace the grief, the sadness and the pain, we allow Jesus to live fully within our broken hearts. We experience the full range of emotions that we were created with and in that place, I find a sacred peace where God has met my mama’s heart in real tangible ways.