“I’ve got you” I felt God say.

Today is Tuesday the 29th of May, 2018.

Seven years after my world rocked,

shattered in minuscule shards.

I remember,

there was silence.

Silence so silent I couldn’t feel it.

Stillness,

nothingness,

broken only by a small, timid voice.

“I’m hungry”

Body moves,

silence stays.

Silence so crippling

I sometimes can’t walk.

I can’t remember.

I don’t know what to do,

where to go,

what to say.

It is silent in my brain,

my soul,

my spirit.

Could God be missing?

It seems so.

I sit and rock.

I rock myself.

I can’t stop.

Rock,

rock,

rock.

Like a baby.

Like a mother with a baby,

trying to get the baby to sleep,

feel better.

I follow the small life down the stairs.

She guides me through

until she sits and eats.

My head down,

tears flow.

“God, I love this small one.

Help me.

She needs me.

She makes me live.”

I look at her.

She smiles at me,

thankful.

She is the only one who stays.

She can’t leave yet.

She is only five.

I need my children like dry soil needs rain.

I need to hold them,

see them,

feel their pain.

They have flown away,

each to their own homes.

Living the lives that they live,

in other places.

far away.

I remind them,

my home reminds them,

the roads remind them

of who is now gone.

Their sister,

tall and slender,

full of life and party,

love and fire.

They must find their own way,

to live.

I wonder.

Do they really find their way?

I wonder because I don’t hear from them much.

They need space.

My pain,

too great.

So great I can’t feel it.

But they feel it.

They know.

I sink,

into the deepest deep of dark.

I cry out.

“Shhh, shhh, there there.”

I hear God say.

Then I know.

Clear.

I’m sleeping.

Passed out from weariness,

God holds me close

to His breast,

rocking me gently,

like a mother,

like a father,

sh sh-ing me quietly back to sleep.

“It’s ok.” I feel Him say.

“You just rest today.

I’ve got you”

written by Hanna McCown

 

My soul slept for three years. I wore black, it matched my dark. I woke up one day like that first wake you get in the morning. It’s a new day, I saw. Yet waking was gradual. I still needed a lot of help. Over the next couple of years I woke and began to see others around me. I began to think about them and what they need and how I was affecting them. I began to join in on this song they call life. I don’t manage well every day but gradually I’m learning again. All new. Wonder, interest, joy gradually flowing back into my ordinary spaces. Yesterday I took flowers to the grave site. It was healing. I got to have a talk with her. It was such a comfort. Still, Mark and Chloe came with me. It is awkward. I find myself considering them. It makes it difficult to just be me. From now on I think that I need to make a regular time to go down by myself, to have that alone time. I have never gone by myself. Never just sat by her grave, alone with our thoughts. It’s time for me to do that.

It may be that someone out here needed to read this.  If so, I hope it is a comfort to you to know that we who grieve our children, we are not alone.  We all grieve differently and alone, yet I receive comfort often in reading other’s experiences.  I have written many pieces about this.  Each time it is different.  Each time I remember a different piece of it.  It is all part of our human experience.  Each time I write about this, I see God in a new more abundant way.

All my love and blessings,

Hanna