Hidden beauty

This past weekend I had the privilege of speaking at The Compassionate Friends conference in New Orleans. The Compassionate Friends is an organization with over 500 chapters across the US and Canada, that provide community to parents and grandparents grieving child loss as well as those grieving sibling loss.

I got to meet author and director Colin Campbell and listen to him speak on the importance of community while grieving. Both the new community we find amongst other grievers, but also how we can and need to maintain our existing community (spoiler, it can take significant work on the part of the griever but is invaluable in the long run). Highly recommend his book Finding the Words.

Roughly a third of the attendees were newly bereaved, with another third having attended this conference a dozen times or more. It was such a beautiful mix of brokenness and healing, where tears were embraced, and stories of our lost children encouraged.

I spoke about my early days of grief, how I didn’t think I wanted to heal, but in reality, I didn’t understand what healing looked like. How healing isn’t forgetting or moving on but remembering and moving forward. Between my talk and the conversations, I had with countless attendees afterward, I was thrust back into those early days of my grief, which in truth, wasn’t that long ago. This October will mark five years without Adelaide. All at once an eternity and a blink.

When I think of the darkest days of my grief, when despair was ever present and to simply exist was grueling, it is primarily contained to the first two years. In part because during year two I started to process my grief – I chose to begin the life-long process of healing. But also, that was when Anessa came to our family. Not only did she bring with her the energy shift of a two-year-old, but she also gave me something else, someone else, to focus on.

In those first two years, I used to wish that I could fast forward to a point in the future when the hurt didn’t hurt so much. When I’d figured out who I was and what I was going to do with a life that wasn’t centered on Adelaide’s care. I couldn’t even envision that life, or I didn’t want to, either way it felt light years away.

I am grateful for the support I received and proud of myself for how far I’ve come. And I’ll preface my next thought by saying I would rather go back to middle school than be forced to relive those two years. However, there was a hidden beauty in those years. The kind of beauty you can only see in reflection.

The majority of that time was spent hunkered in our home at first by grief, and then mandated by the pandemic. We were forced to pause every part of our lives and spend it together, just Miguel, Jackson, and me (and Tabasco).

We took walks, cooked dinner, did school, played games, and watched movies - together. Before Adelaide was born, Miguel was in shows and I was working, our trains passing each other going in and out of the city in the evenings. During Adelaide’s life, Miguel and I divided and conquered: I was in charge of Adelaide’s care, and Miguel was mostly responsible for Jackson. Even when the four of us were able to be together, the concern for Adelaide’s health was an unwelcome fifth wheel. And it probably goes without saying that it was very rarely just Miguel, Jackson, and me.

But in those two years, after Adelaide and before Anessa. When I couldn’t see the path forward and was struggling to breathe. For the first time ever, we got to spend uninterrupted, unchallenged time together.

Of course, all I could see at the time was the space Adelaide had left behind. I still acknowledge that space, but it is no longer all I see. Those two years were temporary, from the state of the world, to the weight of my grief, to the size of our family. I’m not mad at myself for not seeing the uniqueness of those days, after all, I had no idea what was to come. But it is an interesting reminder, that everything in our lives is temporary: the good and the bad. And even in our darkest days there is hidden beauty. Sometimes it just takes hindsight to see them.

Image Description: Kelly is smiling open mouthes at the camera and wearing a gold and black headband that reads “2021!”. Jackson is standing next to her in green pajamas with two party blowers in his mouth. Miguel is wearing a black shirt next to Jackson and wearing the same headband as Kelly. He is blowing an exaggerated kiss on top of Jackson’s head.