Hard.

Since Pipers death my moments of being sad and tearful are brief. While I may cry or allow myself to feel that ache in my heart multiple times a day there is inevitably something or someone who comes along and disrupts my train of thought. Usually I welcome this reprieve from the potentially steep decline into grief and allow myself to clamber out quickly.

But I cannot tell you how many times a day I hear my chirpy mommy voice talking about details of Linleys day while my mind remembers the way I struggled to kiss Piper little lips around the breathing tube. I will be eating lunch out and instead of following the conversation I will be missing the way Pipers cheek fit perfectly in the cup of my hand. Children make me tear up and for some reason they love me lately. Make up seems frivolous and food tastes only slightly better than cardboard.

My daughter is still gone and there is not a damn thing I can do about it.

Nothing is getting easier and in fact I am hurting more each day that passes.

Tonight Chad and I fought. Because it is us, it was a good fight filled with words and thrown pencils and hurt and anger. It was stupid, this fight, as they aways are and yet as I got in my car to leave I found myself hysterical. Sobbing so heavily that I had to pull over in the parking lot of a local church for fear of running off the side of the road even after 45 minutes straight of crying. And I realized that although I am hurt by Chad and I am mad at the way we continue to struggle with connecting and communicating, I really was just so very mad that so very much in my life is hard.

Marriage is hard.

Having your daughter die is hard.

Waking up in the morning and choosing to shower and put pretty earrings on and vacuum and do the dishes and drink coffee and do math facts and participate in the car pool and take a walk and plan dinner and meet up with friends and check your email and read books to 7 year olds and paint your toes and fill up the gas tank and make sure there are clean clothes for all who need them and watching Mad Men and blogging and breathing....

Over and over and over.

It's hard.

And I don't want to.


No, I want to stop this anguish.


And it's even more overwhelming to know that despite my best efforts at compartmentalizing, my grief and sadness are not fading but growing more difficult to handle instead. One can only wander Target so many times or meet up with friends for coffee so many times or drive with loud music pounding so many times before you realize that you are just about to burst and all in the way will see your core.


I wish grief were more like an exorcism. Where if I were to focus hard enough I would be able to spit it out on the floor and walk around it and right out the door. Purge myself of it, of you will. But it doesn't work like that... it goes on and on and on and on.


And it leaves me wondering how to deal with this huge gaping hole that Pipers death has left in my life. I truly do not know how to deal with the hard things in life because I'm still brought to my knees by just how very hard they continue to be.


My marriage is hard and hurting.

We deal with life in very different ways so it's no wonder we are dealing with death in our own styles. Chad allows himself to feel and question and be alone. I think a little too deeply and quickly rearrange the living room before the tears come. Chad rails and I simper. Chad goes as a slow pace through the day while I entrust my OCD to kick in and keep me racing.

With this thing called grief I see Chad allowing himself time. Time to cry or think or rant while I just want it all to go away. I want to busily avoid it when in reality, this depth of sadness only gets deeper when ignored. And despite how differently we are dealing with it we are both feeling it so much more than anyone else in our circle can imagine.

Most of all I allowed myself to have a five minute release which actually lasted over two hours and used up my normal yearly rate of tears. And it has changed nothing except serve to remind me that I am a hurting woman...that I am in a marriage that has been in the midst of a battle for 2 years and I am the mother to one daughter who needs me sober and upright and another who will never need me again.

This is why life is hard.

This is why I was not created for this.

Why I yearn for the eternity created for me and those whom also lean so heavily on my Jesus when life is hard.