1,095 Days

For most people, January is just another month in the year.  For us in Iowa, it is usually full of snow, cold weather, and setting goals at New Years to remake or renew our lives.  January for me stirs emotions.   It is the month that will forever be etched in my memory as a month of loss and heartbreak.

Over the winter break, while sledding with my family, I remembered that I was doing the same thing three years ago in the exact same spot.  My Dad was in the archery shop and came out to visit with my family and my friends family while we were sledding right outside the shop door.  He made a comment to my friend and I about how long we had been friends and how everything was as it should be.  He had fun watching our families play in the snow.  Every time I sled that hill, that is my memory.  I stood in the same place, which is now right outside my kitchen door, and just reminisced that day in my mind.  

As I was driving to school this morning, it hit me that it is January.  That means it has been almost three years or 1,095 days since I last saw my Dad. Unbelievable.  Grief is an interesting emotional path.  In the beginning, it consumes you.  It breaks you down to your core and strips your soul.  I can still remember falling to my knees in the ER room next to Dad and holding his hand.  I can still clearly see the peoples faces in the room and their looks of sadness and shock.  I can still hear their voices of kind comforting words and still remember the smallest details of that day.   I lived that moment every day for a long time.  I can remember laying on my couch at night sobbing because I could not get that scene out of my head.  It was raw and shook me to my core.  People say that time 

heals pain.  I do not agree with that statement.   Our loss will never be "healed."  The gap that Dad left in our life will always be with us.  We have continued to build our lives around the space that was once filled with him.  

I recently read a quote that compared grief to the waves of an ocean.  Sometimes the waves are small and we can handle floating in them with ease.  Other times the water is calm.  But sometimes the waves are large and fast and all we can do is learn to swim.  They knock us over, they take our breath away, but we must keep swimming.   With my faith as my life-vest and my family as my arm floaties, I'm still a float in life's ocean.  I don't always see my waves coming but I know that I have learned to swim in this sea of life.