It’s that time of year again… the season where everything is a little more twinkly, a little more cozy, a little more excited. Our senses are heightened by all of the extra glow along the roads, extra vanilla in the kitchen, extra jingle on the radio (or Alexa… or Google, if you live in the Thomas house). It really is a beautiful time of year. It’s also that time of year again for us, in a different way.
This is the time of year (and I’ve been feeling it creep in here and there over the last few weeks) where our senses and thoughts are heightened in a different, non-Christmas-related way. Christmas is here, which also means that Kamri’s birthday is close behind. I didn’t plan on sitting down to write out the thoughts that have been circulating in my mind. I usually never plan to, but I always know when I’m being called back to this space. I’ve chronicled the entire journey so far (you can read all of those posts here) and I’ve learned what God’s nudging feels like and when it’s time to sit and put the thoughts that have been building up down on paper.
I think maybe this season can be a catalyst for that because I have found that it’s around this time that the grief starts to come back around and settle in for the winter. That sounds sad (and it is, to some extent), but it’s more like welcoming a familiar companion every year. One that you wish you didn’t have, but you’ve learned most of the ins and outs of each other by now to recognize that it’s the season to sit with them a little longer and feel their presence a little deeper. To me, it kind of feels like pulling out a heavy, but cozy blanket that sits in a cedar chest all year and wrapping myself into it for the next little while. So maybe it’s that act of pulling out the blanket and nestling into the inevitable that has stirred my thoughts into written reflection.
Walking through grief is anything but straightforward. This time of year points to the obvious moments where this is true, but there are so many instances all the time, in every season, where this is the case as well. I’ve been transparent this whole time with the nitty gritty of what (our; everyone’s is different) grief looks like, both in the unseen and the tangible, so I’ll share one of the tangible realities that families who have lost a child, or any family member rather, shoulder on an almost-everyday basis.
I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to explain it and I think the word that keeps coming to mind is decisions. There is a constant weight of decision that losing a child puts on you (or I’ll speak for myself here… puts on me) all the time. Pretty much everyday, we are making conscious and subconscious decisions about how to be Kamri’s parents and how to consider her within the context of our lives, given that she is not here. It’s exhausting. I know that this is might be hard to understand, so I’ll stick to some real-life examples to try and best describe what I mean.
When Kamri died, we were launched into a world of trying to figure out how and when to incorporate her as part of our family, and seven years later, parts of that are still really hard. In the beginning, it was navigating the “club that we almost fit into, but don’t really”. We were parents, but with no child to parent. Since she was our first, when she died, we were in this weird space of just having parented to a degree that some (hopefully) never will, but also still didn’t quite fit into the “parent groups” because after all of that, we still didn’t have a child.
Decisions to be made of how to identify ourselves.
When we got pregnant with Holden, from the outside (to those who didn’t know), he looked like our first. Do we correct people when they congratulate us on being new parents? Do we let it go? If we tell them he’s not our first, are we ready to wade into the discussion that will inevitably follow? But what will it feel like to let it go? If we let it go, are we letting her down? Are we shortchanging our daughter and the importance she holds for us? For the first time, we were faced with the responsibility that has never left us since: making the decision of where and when and how to include Kamri as a member of our family and when is it “appropriate” in the eyes of the rest of the world to do so.
Since then, those types of decisions- do we include Kamri in the family line up? – come up pretty regularly. The age old question, “Do you have any kids?”, is probably where that decision-making pops up most regularly. It was a really hard question to field in the beginning and nearly impossible to separate the answer from the emotion. I would dread it. I would dread having to make the decision of how to answer that question and often couldn’t do it without my eyes welling up, generally something more than the inquirer bargained for. Bet you’re sorry you asked, huh? 🙂
The question is easier now, not as jarring, but it’s still a decision to make every time. I usually start very vaguely in response to “how many kids do you have?”.
“Four.”
At that point, the conversation goes one of two ways and I have seven years of experience to back this up. Either that response is enough information for the inquirer and the conversation naturally moves in a different direction… OR, the most natural follow-up: “how old are they?”.
I always start with the youngest and work my way up: “My daughter Haven is 10 months, we have a 3 year old son, Calihan, our son, Holden, is 5, and our oldest, Kamri, would be 7 this December. She passed away a few years ago.”
There’s really no getting around it. We either tell the truth and “go there” or “don’t go there” and leave her out. It sucks. It sucks that those are the two choices. We’ve decided that it’s just not an option to leave her out of our lives and our family; that’s how we’ve chosen to move forward through grief and loss and life. BUT, the actual carrying-out of that decision in the real life, constant situations is exhausting. It’s not our reality, but what a dream it would be to be free of the responsibility of decision-making in that way.
Decisions to be made about how to answer, how to respond.
We learned a long time ago that we don’t owe everyone everything. The cashier at Target doesn’t need access to the most sacred spaces of our lives. But we still have four kids, so to answer the question with “three” physically hurts. I can feel my whole body respond in a gut-wrenching cringe to not count her. It’s not supposed to feel that way when you’re talking about your children, but it does. It’s not supposed to be this way, but it is.
The work-around that I’ve found helpful in some situations is “three here”. The asker may not know that the other isn’t just “at home and not physically right here”, but in fact, is not here at all… and that’s ok. They don’t have to know. “Three here” can work in a pinch. There are no hard and fast rules because there is no such thing in the world of grief, and I think that’s what makes it challenging and continually tiring.
It’s always a decision. It’s always something to consider, to weigh what either option offers or takes away. It’s always a responsibility to hold. Even seven years later.
But “four”. The answer is four. “We have four kids.”
So, what does having four kids (some here, some not) look like beyond the conversation topics? It looks like more decisions. 🙂 I’ve noticed over the years that these decisions not only come across our (Mitch and mine) plates, but our kids’ as well. They are entering into the age where they get/have to hold some of the responsibility of what parts of their family’s story they opt to share and in which settings and to what capacity. Especially with the start of the schooling years, the family tree projects (or more age appropriate, “draw your family”) are an interesting thing to wade through. We let them decide, often simply giving no prompts other than “ok buddy, draw your family” and seeing what happens. We don’t push them in any direction or require them to include Kamri in ways that feel unnatural or forced. We will always insist that she is part of the lineup when they list their siblings verbally in our own home, which I think already happens naturally in the ways that we talk, so it is something they are used to and comfortable with. Beyond that, we want them to have the freedom of figuring out how, when, and with whom they want to talk about her.
Sometimes I worry about this, wondering if it feels awkward or uncomfortable for them, but then I need to remind myself that we’ve done as much work as we can on ourselves and within our home on healthy grief-navigation and that’s the best we can offer them. They’ll figure it out and it’s humbling to watch them do it. When Haven was born, Holden, in his excitement to be a big brother again (and to a sister, his wish!), proudly told his pre-school class that now his family has two girls and two boys. He had figured out a way to include her like there was nothing to it.
More recently, in the beginning of his Kindergarten year this fall, he was tasked with the “draw your family” assignment. For some reason, I have a memory of him drawing the five of us, pausing and thinking about it, and then adding her in. However it came to be, the end result consisted of “Mommy, Daddy, me, Cali, Haven, and Kamri” according to his explanation, which I wrote in quotations on the back.
Decisions to be made about what our family make-up looks like to us.
For the most part, we’ve figured out what feels best for our family. Everyone’s grief is different and everyone is allowed to process and move through it in their own way. For us, she’s just a part of our gang. It hasn’t always been easy to work out what that looks like practically, and sometimes it feels clunky, but for the most part, we’ve found what works.
We still have pictures of her hanging around the house. In fact, we probably have more pictures of her than any other kid- she is the first, after all, and I don’t know a single family that doesn’t have more pictures of their first child and a near-empty baby book for their last. 🙂 When we take family photos, we always make sure to get a full-family shot with Kamri’s frame right in there and a few of the four kids all together. Kamri gets an Easter basket and a Christmas stocking, both filled with a few things for all the kids to enjoy together. Or toothpaste. 🙂 I’ve said it before, but we include her in our Halloween costume planning (just for our own laughs and fun… we don’t bring her Trick-or-Treating with us… I mean, there is a line and that’s it) and always assign her a role in the crew’s costume. In this year’s circus line-up, Kamri played the role of the bearded lady. This allows us to have some fun, light-hearted moments associated with her and gives the kids a chance to be free to have playful, laughter-filled moments with their sister. That’s been really important to us, something we try and intentionally do to balance out the more tender, sad moments. We bake her a cake and sing on her birthday for those same reasons. In the earlier years, we decorated a tabletop Christmas tree all in pink in her honor. We haven’t done that in awhile and it feels ok not to every year. Things ebb and flow, just like grief itself, and keeping an open hand with it feels like the healthy approach.
From the perspective of what works internally (in our own home we just do what feels best for us), it seems that seven years of walking through grief have taught us how to mold a life and a rhythm that feels right. Most of those decisions about how to bring and keep Kamri into the fold have held up over time and are not ones we constantly need to be evaluating. It doesn’t mean it’s always easy or always feels completely natural, which is to be expected. In fact, I’m learning that year seven of grief has introduced a new season of “does this still make sense?”, being that we’re no longer in those first few years anymore. And those types of decisions can feel sad and scary to hold and process. I’ll give you the example that has been on our minds for the last year or two and came up again this season; a full circle moment of our original Christmas chatter. Like I said before, ’tis the season. For all the festive things… Christmas cards included.
Since before she was born, Kamri has been in the picture on the front of our Christmas cards. How could we not? She’s our child, a member of our family. That has always been our thought process.
As the years go on, there’s an un-source-able pressure to consider whether we should keep doing it this way. This is where the weight of decisions that not every family has to (or should have to) make feels so very heavy. I say “pressure”, knowing fully well that this is most certainly more in our own heads than anything else. This is where transparency and vulnerability collide and while it’s scary to keep saying it how it is, I’m writing all of this in the vain of keeping things as raw and as real-time as they have always been around here. Year 7 of grief means we’re asking ourselves if we’re still allowed to put Kamri on the Christmas card. Sometimes we question it. There are some years where we go back and forth. To say that out loud or to type it even feels scary because it takes me right back to those feelings of terror that even considering a question could somehow equate to a betrayal of one of the most important people in my life. The weight of the decision of when, how, and how much is as heavy as it was the first time someone asked, “is this your first?” and the gut wrench no less excruciating. As we process this kind of decision, so many questions come to the surface that are simply a microcosm of grief as a whole:
We’re not new to grief and loss anymore, is there still space to share a representation of that part of us?
Should we have moved on by now?
Is it ok to keep talking about Kamri seven years later, as if she’s as real as ever?
Is that weird for people?
For those people that get our card in the mail, but might not know our story… are they confused why we’re holding a random photo of a baby?
What do other people do who have lost a child?
What if the way we do things isn’t the way other people do them? Is that ok?
What if what feels right for us makes someone else feel uncomfortable?
Decisions about what the rules of this are and what is still allowed.
I know the answers to some of those questions right off the bat. I know that some of the answers (and the questions themselves) don’t even matter, shouldn’t even be considered. But this is the reality when it comes to making the decisions that come with the journey of grief. They’re often not fair, not how it should be or how it was supposed to be. The reality of it is, though, that people and families that are walking the road of grief have to contend with questions and decisions that not everyone else has to. And while the answers may seem simple and straightforward at first glance (“of course, just do what is right for you!”), they’re just not. They’re tiring, layered, and complex and are often laced with pain, insecurity, and guilt. Even seven years out.
We wade in, though, and we let the feelings and thoughts come and then we make one more decision in a long line of those past and future. In the end, it will never be wrong to include Kamri and that’s where we consistently land. She’s ours, forever and ever, and no one has ever asked us to operate otherwise and even if they would… she’s ours and we’re hers and it’s ok to rest in and represent that. After all, it’s been one of the biggest blessings of our lives thus far.
I’m thankful for a few things as I unpack the grief blanket for the season and lean into some quieter moments with my girl and my thoughts. I’m thankful that the decisions are different now than they were when we first started out on this road. I’m thankful that God has been faithful in walking with us through each one. I’m thankful to be able to look back on where we started and see where we’ve come. I’m thankful for the people in our lives that have relentlessly and actively loved and cared about Kamri, allowing us the space to do the same. I’m so thankful for that.
Honestly, it’s for that reason that we’ve felt a sense of freedom from so many of those questions that I listed. Do we think about them and do they weigh on us? Sure, occasionally. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. But they don’t get the final say and they don’t get the title of “truth”. I know a few things to be absolutely true: God made and loves Kamri. There’s a reason he gave her to us and there’s a reason we were chosen to be her parents and the best thing we can do is to just keep doing that. In whatever ways He calls us to.
When I think about those truths, the complexity and pain and insecurity and guilt lighten because all of that will fade away one day, giving way to the Eternity that God has in store. An Eternity so perfect and pain-free and available to anyone who chooses to know and love Him. It’s why we send cards and celebrate this festive season in the first place- that Jesus came to be with us and then die for us so that we could be with him forever. And that is about as “merry” a thing as I could ever think of.
So, yes, it’s that time of year again… the season where everything is a little more twinkly, a little more cozy, a little more excited, and for good reason. So with that in mind, Merry (merry, merry, merry!) Christmas.
Merry Christmas from our whole family to you and yours.
