Daddy

My Dad passed away on the 24th of May. Its hard... like really hard.


I've seen a meme that mentions grief being like the ocean, waves of grief come over you and feel overwhelming where you can hardly breathe, you survive the surge and finally catch your breath and feel okay only to have another huge wave of grief wash over you - that's where I'm at.


It feels super surreal sometimes. Like he's still at home and will be sitting at the kitchen table. He'll say "Hey Babe" as I walk in the room and go over to give him a hug. He'll ask me what I know and I'll jokingly say 'not much' and we both chuckle.


We knew that Dad's time with us was limited. He was diagnosed with Pancreatic cancer in December of 2016 - the same month I found out that we were pregnant with Savannah. He went through treatments and actually had great response, with tumors shrinking, he had very little sickness. The doctors gave him 6 months to live - He sure showed them! With his great response to treatment I think we all thought that he was going to live much much longer than everyone expected. Then he had a heart attack - a total shocker to all of us. This was the begin of his decline.


I worked in a cancer center for many many years as a financial advisor, going over insurance benefits with patients as they faced this scary disease. Everyone always spoke about quality of life versus quantity of life and I thought I understood what that looked like. When patients would stop treatment and start living the life they had left. It was bittersweet, they knew their end was near and they wanted to enjoy it. After the heart attack dad's quality of life declined A TON. It was so hard seeing a man so capable, so independent become a man who had to rely on others to help him do every day normal things.


His birthday was the 20th, 4 days before he passed. I yelled at him and told him that he had to make a choice to either want to live or giving up. He told me he wanted to live and that he would try - God had other plans.


He passed with a room full of family, my sister and I were holding his hands and mom was hugging him. A beautiful passing for a beautiful man.


Fly high Daddy!
I expect you to be building a tear drop camper,  building an epic go kart and teaching Logan all the things in that great big bard in Heaven.


It certainly isn't good bye, it's only a see you later.

 

Closure with a constant reminder

This weekend the mister and I finally got tatoos to memorialize Logan. We have talked about getting these tattoos really since Logan died, we knew that he was a part of us and we wanted to have a constant reminder, a symbol, of him being close to us.

Mine is Logan's foot prints in a heart with wings. I'm in LOVE! (please excuse the flab... :) )

Johnny's is a celtic cross, filled with fathers knots with Logan's name and his angelversary date.

It was a great experience. I was so nervous because I went by myself. Johnny was supposed to be there with me, however they called after Lexi had gone to sleep and there was NO way we were going to wake her up. It feels, now, like it was supposed to be just me. A time for me to reflect, to tell Logan's story to a person who I have no connections to. To relive the pain, but also reflect on the many blessing Logan has created. While he (Joel)  was doing my tattoo he made a comment that stuck with me. "Sometimes the easiest way to have closure is to have a constant reminder." EXACTLY!

Stay strong in those moments of weakness, you never know what lesson  you are learning, but rest assured there is a lesson there.

Have you ever done something to help with closure that is a constant reminder? I'd love to hear about it!

(Oh the tatoo place that we did these at is call Aftershock Tatto in Olathe, Ks. Joel Jenkins did these tattoos for us and even if he never finds out that I've posted this, he deserves the biggest shout out, he did these tattoos with such grace and kindness that it blew both Johnny and I away)

guilt

I’ll be honest. Here recently I’ve felt guilty. I’ve felt that I’ve let down my little boy down. When Logan died I knew that there was a purpose. One that, possibly, I made up, to make me feel better or to make the reason he died concrete instead of he just did. Maybe it was divinely given to me. Maybe it has made me feel better that because of Logan I feel that I have a purpose; to share his story. To help others going through the same thing that we did. To make sure others knew they weren’t alone. I’ve really questioned how easily I came to the conclusion that it was ‘okay’ that Logan died because of these reasons… Is it God’s grace that I’ve allowed myself to move forward? Is it ignorance? Is it stupidity? I really don’t know. But I’m thankful.



I find myself feeling guilty for many different reasons. One is that I’m not doing the walk this year. Seriously breaks my heart, but with the cost of all of the things I just can’t afford to do it. It scares me that if I skip this year that it won’t be nearly as important to others next year. That’s something that I just have to pray about and trust that God will provide. Another reason I feel guilty is that I feel that I’m coping much better with losing Logan than Mr. Clear is. I know that everyone grieves differently in different timelines and in different ways, but I’m afraid that I need to hold myself back or I’m going to get frustrated, I just have to remember that we all deal with loss differently. Another reason I feel guilty, and this one is as backwards as can be, every time I tell my story about Logan, or offer myself to someone who has suffered a loss, every time I make known that I’ve lost a child, I feel guilty that I may be shattering the dreams of a pregnant soon to be mom. I know that when I was pregnant with Lexi there were people that had lost babies to miscarriage and I just simply didn’t want to hear it, so I ignored them. I somehow feel guilty about being so open about our loss. Backwards? I think so!



Guilt is so strange. It shows you where you are weak, it shows you where you are strong, but it’s something that we have to allow God to give us grace with as well. I am working on praying more about my guilt issues. I pray that God gives me the grace to forgive myself for feeling guilty. I pray that God will show us all the grace for feeling guilt.