Wednesday, March 27, 2024

Michael's Call

Dear Aaron,

Michael's call came. I'm feeling kinda emotional about this. He's the last one, and each has been a little harder to let go than the one before.

The Arkansas Bentonville mission is getting one of the very best.  Actually, maybe two of the very best.



Will you be there? I somehow feel that wherever he is, he'll be in a trio because you'll be by his side. You two really grew up together. He doesn't remember life before you, not really. He wasn't even four years old yet when you were born.

And as he grew, he learned so much about how to take care of you. Honestly, he was one of your very best caregivers. He just "knew" what you needed. He was also an incredible support for me, too. There were nights he would take over, staying up as long as he could, so I could sleep in my own bed and not have to get up to do meds and treatments. He would usually make it until 5:30 or 6 am, and then go crash in his room, but that gave me the rest I needed to keep going on.

He would play with you, read you stories. He knew how to change your trach, do your meds, feedings; pretty much everything. 

Will you now take care of him? 

I know he'll be an incredible missionary. Please be by his side. 

“Our loved ones who have passed on are not far from us.”
Ezra Taft Benson






Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Dear Aaron

Dear Aaron,

Tonight as I drove home, a blanket of clouds covered our mountains. I come from the west side of the valley, and it was sunny there. But as I looked towards home, to the mountains that gently wrap around you, and our home, I couldn't see
them. And a little to the south, they were dark, ominous. 

As I approached Alpine, and the snow started to hit the windshield, I saw two flocks of small birds, dipping and flying for nearby trees.  

Yeah, spring didn't stick around long before giving way to winter again. As I look out the window right now, there are big fluffy snowflakes falling. It's pretty, I guess, but it was prettier in December than at the end of March. 


I can't help feeling there's many metaphors in here for grief. I know I can feel comfort, and even glimpses of joy, but then the clouds come again, the winds buffet, and I am left searching for refuge. 

Like I know my mountains are somewhere behind the storm, I know you're at peace, healed, whole, but I can't see you.

I did dream about you last night, and it was wonderful. Kinda like my first two dreams, you had passed but then were alive again. Except this time, you died, lived, died and lived again, and I knew in my dream it a was a matter of time before you would be gone for good, but we were given a reprieve. 

I mean, it's what happened in real life, really. I just didn't realize it at the time. As I looked back through my notes trying to find information for another trisomy mama, I looked again at your numbers over the past two years, especially when you were so very critical. It had to have been the power of faith and prayer that kept you here, and frankly, I'm grateful for it. I have been fully transparent this whole journey that I am a greedy person. I wanted every single minute of your life, and then more.  

Today my sweet friend sent me the album of pictures from your services. Oh, Aaron, I'm so grateful for them, and felt the pain again knife through me. What a precious gift she has given us all. 

All the friends and family who came to see you and us, the pictures of closing the casket and our last glimpses of you, your brothers tenderly carrying you to your resting place... 

All the memories...

Oh my son, my dear, dear son. 

What a treasure you are. 

“Memory is not what the heart desires. That is only a mirror.”
— Gimli


Monday, March 25, 2024

My Son

Hi Aaron,

I'm sitting here in a (mostly) empty house (the dogs are here) listening to a piece called, "When David Heard". It's about when King David heard that his son Absolom had died, but it was written for a man whose son had been killed in an auto accident.

It goes through so much of the grief process, the denial, bargaining, depression, intense sorrow, and I guess, acceptance to a degree. 

It is a father crying out for their child that isn't here anymore.

It rips at me.

Oh, my son...

Will I always feel this tearing in my soul?

I'm looking back at blog posts, trying to find information for another mom, and I can see it now so clearly. You were tired, so tired. You fought for so long. And yet, I don't think we did "to" you, really I don't. 

In fact, when I spoke with the attending who had been with us the night you left, she told me about seeing you leave the unit the previous time, just a few weeks earlier, seeing your smile, your joy. She said she would hold that image in her heart. The sight of you being happy, loving life. 

You know, I actually made it home today, even driving past your grave, without crying. But then now...

I love you, Aaron. This pain born of suffering, I know I will grow, will learn, will progress. But oh, right now, it hurts. 

“I almost didn’t cry today until the memories of you found me,
unraveling my heart again piece by piece, reminding me why I still do
…Every day"
Amelia Lynn


Sunday, March 24, 2024

Palm Sunday

Hey Aaron,

It's Palm Sunday, the beginning of the end of Christ's mortal ministry. 

In some ways, I've been dreading Easter this year. Does that seem strange? But tonight Michael and I went to a Palm Sunday fireside and I actually felt something besides pain. I felt hope, maybe true hope for the first time in over three months. 

I mean, I know it's been there, but not so much in regards to you. I've laughed and had fun, I've smiled, I've felt positive emotions, and lots of comfort along with the crippling pain. 

Although, when the story of Lazarus was mentioned, I remembered holding your hand for those next hours after you passed, hoping you would return. I know it was not in His plan, and was not what you needed, maybe even not what I needed, but still, I hoped...

Hope, in regards to missing you, well, it's been in short supply. 

I know you're fine, you're more than fine. You finished your journey, but you left me behind. 

The music tonight resonated with me. The Spirit has always spoken to me through music, and tonight was no exception. At the end, we sang, "I Believe in Christ." Several years ago in sacrament meeting, we sang that while you were there, and I felt your soul speak to mine. At the time, the words seemed like you speaking to me, "And while I strive through grief and pain, His voice is heard, ye shall obtain." Tonight, they were mine. 

I'm working through my grief and pain, and I do have faith that it will teach me, I am growing and learning, and I am becoming a better person. Through Christ, I can (and will) become who I am meant to be.

At one point, experts taught that grief can be "healed." I don't think that's actually true. Healing implies that it's "all better" and there seems to be something fundamentally wrong with that. To be "all better" would mean I would forget you, or not love you, or something, at least in my mind. And actually, current theories point instead to growing in and through the grief, that it will always be the same size, but we grow and develop further so we become better. 

And I think that's what growth is about. 

Does it mean it doesn't hurt? Oh, NO!! It still feels like a rock sitting in the middle of my own lungs, like my own heart is constricted, and the tears still often flow freely. My guess is that they always will, in one form or another, at least until I see you again.

But Aaron, I will see you again, I know that. You are my son and we will be together again, thanks to the atonement and the resurrection of Christ. He makes this all possible. I could not go on otherwise. 

So I will celebrate this Easter, and hold you close in my heart. 

Love you, little man.

Miss you. 

"Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection,
not in books alone but in every leaf of springtime."

- Martin Luther

Friday, March 22, 2024

Three Months, 13 Weeks

Hey Aaron,

Facebook and OneDrive keep sending me memories, and there are a lot. 

I mean, it's Trisomy month, plus the pandemic started four years ago, or at least the shutdown did, and I took pictures and/or video every day to document it. 

Sometimes, sometimes memory is where I'd rather be anyway. This picture, taken on a Sunday, was when things were oh so new. Your brothers prepared and passed the sacrament to us. You were there, they were there. So much has changed since this picture.

Andrew graduated just over a year later and went to serve a mission in Arizona and now lives in Provo.

Michael's papers are in and he's waiting for his call.

And you, my son, you've answered your own call to serve, but while you did have a farewell, you won't be having a homecoming, not on this side of heaven.

I made a deal (or I tried to) ten years ago that you would stick around until we were done with missions, in about 13 years, and then we would renegotiate. I meant I wanted 13 more years, not 13 years total. But I think we all knew you didn't have three more years. You held on until Andrew got home. It was so close a couple times, but you persevered, and I'm grateful. 

But I still miss you.

I think back to that last night, and it still doesn't seem quite real, and yet at the same time it sometimes seems more real than anything since then. 

I mean, really, how does this world keep turning, keep going, time keep passing, when you aren't here???

Will Friday into Saturday always hurt?

Three months down and a lifetime to go.

I love you.  

The time machine I dream of would not merely travel backward and forward.
It would have a button for lingering in the moment.

~Robert Brault

Thursday, March 21, 2024

Another "Last"

So Aaron, tonight was our very last night of ward ball. 

And apparently, Andrew left his mark on the team when he chose the mascot. He said they asked for a mascot when he was playing and he told them, "penguins." So their uniforms say "Mountainville 3rd Penguins." Silly kid... 

It seems kinda weird for that to actually be over. I remember going to games back when David was just 12, and then Jonny, and so on. Now with Michael graduating this year, it's over. No more, and that's strange.

Within a few months, it will just be Dad and me and the dogs here.

I'm not sure I'm ready for that. 

Somehow, I never thought about what it would be like with no kids here. I always assumed you'd be here, and you were.

Until you weren't. 

You're the youngest, not Michael. He shouldn't be the last to leave, and yet he is.

Someone whose child just passed asked me today when it was that I was able to start working and feel like I was semi-functioning again. Honestly, I'm not sure.

I know I went back to work on January 3rd, not quite two weeks after you left, but I don't know that I should have. When I stayed home that Friday because of training I was relieved to not have to leave the house, or I guess more specifically, to return to the house. Somehow, the returning has always been the hardest part. 

Anyway, those days are honestly kinda a blur, maybe because my heart and brain are protecting me, a trauma response to the pain. 

I don't know...

Anyway, kiddo, I miss you. I love you so much. The pain is becoming less intense, at least most of the time, but it still underlies everything I do.  I think in one form or another, it will always be there. There really isn't a day that doesn't have some tears in it. But then I discovered yesterday that the first two years is considered "early grief" so I guess that's to be expected.  

I learned this week that Nana wrote to Papa every night after he passed until she joined him 20 years later. I wish I could read what she wrote, but it gives me strength just to know it happened. I hope you're with them. After all, you're named for him. 

I love you. 

I miss you.

“Grief is like the ocean; it comes on waves ebbing and flowing.
Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming.
All we can do is learn to swim.” 

- Vicki Harrison. 

Wednesday, March 20, 2024

Spring

Hey Aaron, it's officially spring.

Of course since we're in Utah, that doesn't really mean a whole lot. While we see the sun more, it may actually be the "spring of deception" soon to be followed by 3rd winter. But whatever...

I went to the Manti Temple open house today with Gramma and Grampa Brown and Uncle Tad and Aunt Maurie. 

Manti is where Gramma and Grampa were married 55 year ago, and where I recieved my own endowments 34 years ago. My grandma and grandpa worked there for as far back as I can remember. Today Grampa told of going there to do baptisms when he was a teen, probably right about your age even. 

As we walked through, I was touched and humbled by all the efforts and talents that went into creating this beautiful House of the Lord. And so grateful for it's presence and influence in my life, the sacrifices made by so many so we can be together again. 

Aaron, it was so beautiful! Do you remember last summer when we went to the Saratoga Springs open house? Your bus driver was there, too. We saw him and his family in the celestial room. I remember sitting there with you, and something told me to cherish those moments because they wouldn't come again. 

And they didn't. 

But still, were you there? Are you here? 

My little boy, I'm so glad we got to do this together last summer.  

After the temple, we went by your site. Gramma and Grampa weren't there for the burial so it was their first time actually there, although Aunt Maurie did a video call with them that day. It's so peaceful there, the mountains surrounding you, the grass beginning to grow. 

I miss you, Aaron. 

Thank you for being my son, for blessing our home with your spirit. 

Love you so much.

 “It is not the strength of the body, but the strength of the spirit.”
— J.R.R. Tolkien