Wednesday, October 19, 2011

The Sharp Knife of a Short Life

Who knew when we said Happy Birthday to you that morning that this would be the only birthday we would ever have.  I think about this picture and how that morning for some reason it so important to take this picture.  Your Dad was so nervous, we were running late to get to the hospital but I wanted so badly to take this picture.  I had so many hopes, so many dreams just for you, my daughter! 


These last few days all I have thought about is you, my sweet Kelsie, since the moment I first held you until the last morning I kissed you goodbye.  I thank God that I will never worry if I loved you enough, because I loved you with every inch of my being.  I know this because you were and are so easy to love.  It's your love sweet girl that has made me strong, it is your smile that picks my head up off my pillow every morning. 


Holding you night after night, looking at your cherub face, I remember thinking...Life would be just unbearable without you.  Now I am faced with that terror.  There was no warning, there was no sign from God.  One minute I held you the next minute you where God's child.  Today is day 6 without you and the emptiness is at times just unimaginable.  There are so many unanswered questions that a short life leaves you with.  Tonight I truly don't understand why you were taken from me, I cherished you so much, I cherished every day and every moment we had.  I wanted to laugh out loud with you.  I wanted to love you through your first broken heart.  I wanted to fight with you every morning about what you were going to wear.  I wanted to help find yourself and not only chase your dreams but live them everyday.  Today, day 6, I am left with only the memories of the 6 months we had.

3 comments:

  1. Summer,this is a beautiful way to express the love and light Kelsie brought into everyone's life! I never got to meet her but it is so obvious the absolute joy that she brought! I love that you are drawing the Lord near and allowing him to wrap his arms around you, Jeff, Dylan and the family and show all his amazing grace!! -Kim Bryant

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  2. Summer, you are so brave and strong, and I'm so glad Jeff has you. You deserved to have all those moments with her, and I can't understand why that wasn't meant to be. I keep thinking about that sweet little face and that bright smile and how much you guys loved her. I'll never forget how much Jeff wanted all of us to hold her at the baby shower and how you and he included us in your joy. -Jessica

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  3. I guess it's impossible to know all the WHY answers. Don't guess we will understand it all until we are there with them. Maybe there we won't care as much about why, though I can't imagine that.

    I already know I want to address this post in more depth, but I will come back to it. I just got up and want some time to expand on thought and community in the world of grief. It is so universal, yet impossible to understand really.

    I know this. I hate that these writings, in their intensity and honesty, must be written by you. If not you, who then? Who would you ever wish this on? Perhaps that is a tiny part of the answer. In one form or another, loss will touch us all. The times I thought I could not bear my own loss(es), right behind that I thought that perhaps I could bear it more than perhaps my children could bear the loss of me. Keeping Preslee intensified that thought. If her mother never returned from Dallas, how could that be explained? For years, it could not and by then the damage would probably have hardened her little heart. In the end, it is only our Father that can heal our broken hearts and I do think one of the ways He does that is in the community of others.

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