Every year this gets a little more awkward to post about. Every year I feel a little more alone in my celebration of Camille's life. I understand that. Life has a way of piling grief on grief and eventually the griefs further down the pile are forgotten or overshadowed by those more recent or closer to us.
Yet, I continue to invite others to celebrate with us because I want to continue spreading goodness into this grief filled world. It is my hope that in this of all years, we can focus on being grateful for the time we have been privileged to enjoy with our loved ones in years gone by rather than aching for the time we have missed more recently.
I have come to have a greater appreciation of the absolutely essential nature of opposition to our happiness. We truly cannot have true happiness without sorrow. We cannot have true joy without the aching of wanting and waiting. Food always tastes so much better after fasting.
So this year, after a year of so much wanting and waiting, will you join me in taking a break from all that wanting and waiting and focus a bit on being grateful and paying that gratitude forward in kindness?
Happy birthday week my sweet girl. I hope you are busy helping others from your side of things while those who remember you are working to help others from our side.
3 comments:
I’m so grateful that you do write about your sweet Cami each year and feel honored that I can be a part of celebrating her life with you.
Interesting choice of picture. Surely you couldn't have picked one that showed your living daughters' faces instead of one where they're behind a framed photo of their dead sister?
With this picture choice, you seem to be saying that the daughter whose been dead for nearly 15 years matters more than your daughters who are actually still alive.
So many bereaved mothers on social media today have this attitude of, "I'm going to destroy my living children because their sibling died" and they go on to make every big family event, holiday, and milestone in the lives of their living children all about the dead sibling. It's awful. Eventually those living children will grow up to resent their mothers for shoving their dead siblings down their throats all the time.
I've read your blog off and on for years, and you seem more levelheaded than that. But this choice of picture gives me pause and has me giving you some major side-eye.
Dear Anon of the comment above,
Interesting perspective. You seem to have put some thought into this. While it has been 9 months since I posted this, I have a vague recollection of why I chose this picture. Honestly I did not put as much thought into it. It was a post to celebrate Camille's birthday. The post is about Camille on the week we, as a family, celebrate her life. So I was looking for a picture of HER not a picture of my other children. I most likely wrote this post on my phone and was scrolling to find a photo of Camille and THIS is the most recent photo I have of her. It was our family pictures 2021. We always bring a framed photo of her with us for family photos because she is part of our family. When we were taking photos of my girls we took some of 3 with them and the "girl" dog Lulu (no photo of Camille included.) We took 5 of the dog the 3 girls and me. We took 2 of the girls with the picture of Camille. One in which they were surrounding her. But before we took that photo, the girls were joking around and put the frame on Lauren's lap and all hid behind it - not for a photo but just because they were being silly. Well the photographer snapped a photo of their silliness. That's the photo I chose because it was the last one on my photo reel with Camille front and center.
I hope that helps you better understand my photo choice.
As for how bereaved mother's choose to get through this, I choose to have no judgment. Having experienced how completely life altering losing a child is, I have no side-eye for how anyone gets through it. We all just have to extend a lot of grace. I will say that grief over the loss of a child heightens for every bereaved parent I know (and I know lot now) at every milestone in life, every holiday, etc. How each person processes those emotions is personal to them. Some share it on social media, but maybe that is their outlet and it isn't really the focus of their family celebration because they shared on social media. It's really hard to know all that lies behind the Instagram post.
Personally, at this point, I do not share publicly when waves of grief knock me down. They do still come. But they are tempered by a broader perspective and gratitude for the blessings that have come to me, some of which have come because of Camille's death. And so I turn to the Lord in prayer and cry my tears on His shoulder and most of the time it is enough.
Thanks for reading now and then. - Stephanie
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