My silly, sarcastic, sensitive Brecken turned 10 last week. She’s so much fun to celebrate because she is so. darn. grateful. for everything.
My heart will never not burst when I see these sweet sisters (that could have not been sisters!) loving on each other and excited for one another.
She’s wanted a pet for a while and after some research, we landed on a pinstripe gecko.
Meet Apollo:
He’s just a baby so his little jumps are so cute!
Admittedly, I’m not a pet person. But this one is tolerable. And doesn’t require anything from me. It’s been a lot of fun watching the kids play and take care of him.
Just like the holidays, it was hard to celebrate Brecken’s birthday without Deacon. He loved celebrating other people’s birthdays almost as much as his own. He would get SO excited for them, their party, and their gifts. I’m sure he would have been fighting for Apollo time too. But Brecken is a girl worth smiling for and loving on! So thankful for 10 years.
Today is four months without Deacon. It’s somehow a minute and forever both at the same time. In the good moments I know that I’m four months closer to him. But in the (more common) bad moments, I feel time marching me away from him and I can barely stand it. I want to hold him so badly my arms ache to the point I can’t lift them sometimes. I sit and remember what it felt like to brush his hair off his forehead, foolishly trying to train hair that was sprouted from the head of the very definition of stubborn. His wiry, lean body that still somehow managed to melt into all the right places for a snuggle. The incredible color of his perfectly browned skin, that I envied daily.
I was reading a book the other day, and turned the page and there he was. His exact birthday.
In my fb feed there’s an advertisement for some class on Megalodons and I can hear Deacon telling me for the 600th time that Megalodons were real and lived in the Mariana Trench.
A picture falls off the girl’s door and I pick it up to find a message from him.
He’s all around me and yet too far. Four months. God loved me out loud today with several sweet messages from women reaching out in love. A dear friend brought a new baby boy into the world. A family member had a really good day. It all took the edge off. Another 19th survived.
2020 is the year that ended me. I’ve felt confused, scared, lonely, isolated, anxious, shamed for going out, shamed for staying in. My kids have been in school, out of school, and every version in between. We’ve cancelled trips, family gatherings, church, and restaurants. Political division, racial tensions, pandemic confusion. And that was the easy part. I also buried my son. I have every reason to join the world with a raised middle finger to 2020 as we cross over to 2021. I hope to never experience pain so horrific ever again.
And yet. I find myself wanting to stay here, in this mess of a year that brought unimaginable pain, because its the last year he was in. The last year that will have memories associated with him. The last summer at the lake, last birthday, last meal cooked for him, last time I kissed him goodnight, and the last time I rubbed his back awake. How do I leave that all behind? I don’t know how to step into a year that won’t have one single new memory of him.
I’m not ok even though I’m ok. 2020 taught me that joy and grief can coexist. That I can beg for my own death in the same breath that I pray for life. It taught me grace and rage. It taught me an existence with one foot on Earth and one foot in eternity and that no one dies before their time. Its the last year I will ever have with my beautiful boy in his body. He is Home and its impossible to imagine beginning a new year, continuing a lifetime without him physically here.
In the middle of a good closet cry, a friend texts:
Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. Isaiah 43:18-19
It’s not easy but its there….a new beginning. Not formed by the abandonment of the past, but from the shards of it. 2021 doesn’t change 2020 (or every year before). My past is still real, still filled with love, still valid.
Without a clue how to even begin to get through Christmas without Deacon, we left. We told our families that while we were not trying to avoid them, or even Christmas really (bc with four children we couldn’t even if we wanted to), but that we couldn’t do our traditions and gatherings as normal so soon after losing Deacon.
We ended up in Crested Butte, Colorado. In a sweet little place, on the loveliest of mountains, with family joining us just down the street. We played in more snow than the kids had ever seen in all the Kansas snow days combined, decorated cookies, played hours of games, made a gingerbread village, ate lots, and even managed to teach four kids to ski. It was exactly what we needed. It was good. It was hard.
The girls second day skiing.
This run with the girls was so full of emotion. Long, beautiful stretches where it felt we were the only ones on the mountain. At one point I could picture Deacon so clearly skiing there with us. How much he would have loved it and the shouts of joy he would have been letting out. It made me start to cry (not recommended flying down a mountain with goggles on). But also, there was a moment when I looked at my new smaller family, fighting for joy and normal and unity, and thought, “Ok. We can do this.” Yes, we’ve been shattered to dust. But God does his work here. He’s the potter and he’ll add some water, begin to reform, and made us something new.
Madden learning to ski.
Overall, leaving for Christmas was the right choice for us. There were tears (I tried to keep them to showers and the middle of the night), but mostly I tried to stay present. Christmas Day had sadness. But we’re sad every day. We woke up the 26th and he was still gone. We were still sad. But I also think this week showed our kids that we will fight to give them a childhood not marked solely by grief.
Our picture looks much different this year, with two less children than last year. One, reunified with her birth family, and one, reunified with his Savior in heaven. Our hearts are raw and our grief is relentless. However, we do not mourn “as those who have no hope” (1 Thess. 4:13) and this Advent season we look to the coming of all that is promised. Both in the preparation of a baby-born Messiah, and in our increased reminder and desire for His second coming. Advent for us this year is the now and not yet. Songs and groans. Comfort and lament. We’re thankful for you, friends, and the gentleness and love you’ve shown us this season. We pray you also seek this Emmanuel, God with us.
Choose joy, they say. It’s on shirts, bumper stickers, wall hangings, and tattoos. I’ve even managed to muster it up before too. Take a deep breath, a sip of Dr. Pepper 10, whisper a prayer, and choose joy.
That isn’t happening now though. The joy isn’t just hard to find, I sometimes wonder if it even exists anymore. Choose joy. An honest option? Or just another cliché.
Tomorrow is a new day.
Joy comes in the morning.
You can’t have the rainbow without the rain.
The sun will come out tomorrow.
The losses of this year scream over me. And I don’t want to be bullied into joy. I won’t be cliched into it. Not only do I not think I can let go of the hurt and ache, I don’t think I even want to. In truth, the more I look at Advent, the more I realize that sorrow and loss isn’t exactly in opposition to it. The world shows the Christmas story as sweet little nativity scenes. Clean barn animals, three happy rich guys with gifts, and the reminder that “joy can even be found in a stable”! But look again and I also see that born into that night was a God who would now have to suffer, lose everything, feel abandoned, experience anger, be rejected, and even cry out in anguish…wondering where God had gone. There’s an Advent I can relate to.
Sure, a cliché can be right. The sun will come out tomorrow. But that doesn’t always mean there’s comfort or help in it. Sometimes I need to sit on the floor of my closet at 2 am and weep until my body aches, my eyes are raw, and as if the sun may not ever rise again.
I can celebrate a Messiah sent but not without also absorbing in pain for what it meant for that little baby and what would come. My soul just wants to curl up and weep. I believe the Emmanuel…the God With Us…knows exactly how I feel. And that’s a place I can find a mediocre of comfort this season. Not from choosing joy….from choosing mourning.
While all of the kids have had a “favorite” color at any given time, they’ve always been prone to change their minds or have several favorites at a time.
Not Madden. He has been obsessed with orange from a very young age.
Clothes, toys, bikes, and food are all far superior if they are orange.
Even in an ice cream store with 20 flavors, he goes for the orange sherbet. It’s dedication.
So, when remote schooling recently began, obviously all work was done in an orange marker. Only, by day three, all our orange markers were drying out. The LAST thing we needed was more packs of markers just get get one or two orange ones.
Amazon to the rescue.
Did you know you can buy 12-packs of individual Crayola marker colors? You can. Perhaps this is all I’ll fill his stocking with. 🧡
One of the challenging parts of the last two months without Deacon that I didn’t see coming has been learning to stop parenting him. My muscle memory for being his mom is so strong. Grabbing his lunch box in the morning, setting his spot at the table, checking for an inhaler in my bag before we leave. Every time I do something that involves him that doesn’t need to be done anymore it hits so hard again…he’s gone.
The need to do for him has been extra loud while shopping for Christmas presents. It was impossible to scan the toy isle and not see 10 things he would have wanted and I would have wanted to get him. So Derek and I did. We bought the monster trucks and hot wheels and obnoxious screeching dinosaurs. I piled them in our cart, took them home, and wrapped them. And while there’s a boy on an angel tree on our town who will get the joy of opening these gifts on Christmas morning, and I need to take them to the delivery point soon, just for now, for a little bit longer, I’ll look at them under my tree and pretend they’re going to Deacon.
Sometimes I internally kick myself for not remembering that I don’t need to do something. But then I think of, with dread, the day coming in the future when I’ll realize I went all day without trying to do something for him. What will that day say about me? So for now, I keep throwing his jacket in the back of the car with the others, adding his favorite foods to the grocery order, and heading upstairs to make sure he’s fallen asleep in his bed and not somewhere strange. It was an honor in the mundane to care for him while he was alive, so I’ll try to find joy in continuing to do for him while my muscle memory is still strong.
There is a famous sculpture by Celeste Roberge, that, while not her initial plan, has been widely described and shared as depicting the “weight of grief”. After so many years of compounding grief, I look at it and immediately feel a connection to the sculpture. It looks like I feel. 4,000 pounds of sorrow. Each rock representing a facet of all that I feel made up now.
Sadness
Guilt
Confusion
Hopelessness
Failure
Loneliness
Desperation
Denial
Self-doubt
Disappointment
Loss
Bitterness
Anger
Blame
Regret
Shame
Pain
Heartache
Disbelief
In clearer moments I know there is more to me that the list above. I know I’m held and seen by Someone who speaks much more truth into me. But the clear moments aren’t all that common yet. And the weight of grief is sometimes suffocating.
Claassen Clan 