Paradox

Dear Weston,
It has been a week of contrasts. Today is Christmas Eve. For the last month, people have been celebrating a lot of things. If you were here with us, we would have been celebrating your first Christmas. You would have been too young to care or remember, but your daddy and I would have always remembered and treasured this time. We will, of course, always remember this Christmas, but instead we will remember a season of great pain and loss. I fervently hope that Christmas will get better, but after meeting so many of your heavenly playmates' parents, I am not sure that next Christmas, and the Christmas after that, etc. will be better.

So, that is a big paradox. We feel your absence every day, but the Christmas season highlights it. On the other hand, I have often felt you with me this past week.

Do you remember that day at Starbucks after I picked up your ashes? One of many intense happenings that day was hearing the song "Hallelujah" after thinking about putting it on your playlist. This may seem like a small thing, but it was a big deal to me. Last week, I was driving around listening to NPR. They were doing an entire story on the meaning of that song. I had to sit in the car and listen to more of the story before I went in to run my errand. I just knew that was you telling me you were near.

Later that day, I was reading a book called Proof of Heaven, about a neurosurgeon who had a near death experience. SPOILER ALERT: this neurosurgeon visited heaven and experienced God. As he was coming back to earth, he began to see faces he recognized. None had much impact, except the last face he saw: a little boy's. His son. His son's face provided the final motivation to return back to earth: this little boy needed his father.

I thought of you when I read about this little boy. It is essentially the opposite situation as ours: you were the sick one, not me, and you didn't come back to me after you died. But I see your face, and it motivates me. To do what, I'm not sure. In the book, the man was about to be reunited with his son in life, not in death. I couldn't help but long for that day when I see your face and know that our reuniting is imminent.

A surprising thing happened last week: I actually went to a party. Even more surprisingly, I had a good time. I crashed my former law firm's holiday party. There were only a handful of people there by the time I arrived, which was good. These are people I spent my days with for almost five years, and I miss them. They care about you.

I feel that my heart is about to burst with gratitude for friends and meaningful, sometimes unexpected, companionship. In addition to the party, over the last week I have spent time with people I have known since childhood. (That's a good thing about Christmas: everyone comes home, so we can see each other.) One I had not seen in about seven years, and I have not been in regular contact with any of them in years. Yet they laughed with me, cried with me, wanted to see pictures of you, and just listened. They have prayed for me and lit candles for you. There are people in my everyday life who would never do this, so to have this kind of love and support from these women from my awkward teenage years just astounds me, in the best possible way. I have also received messages from many people who simply want me to know they are thinking of us during this impossibly difficult time. I know that YOU are behind this. YOU have imprinted people's hearts and inspired them to reach out, sometimes out of their comfort zones. I feel so honored to be the recipient of such kindness.

And I am not the only recipient. I had grand ideas for our family's Christmas card this year. My original plan was to enclose a Random Act of Kindness card for people to do something kind in your honor. But then, I stumbled upon a great idea from another mom who lost a child. She asked people to do a random act of kindness in honor of her son who died and then email her about it. She would print off the emails to put in her son's stocking and read them on Christmas Day. She thought of this when she hung her son's stocking on their first Christmas without him and was overwhelmed with sadness that his stocking would not be filled. I had not yet thought of the pain in the contrast of your empty stocking hanging next to your big sister's full stocking on Christmas morning.

I loved the idea, so I included the same request in our Christmas cards. The only problem is, I didn't send the cards out soon enough: some people literally did not get their cards until today! Although there is always an opportunity to do a random act of kindness, it is impossible to get it done in time to email me about it for Christmas morning.

But that's OK. I sent out A LOT of cards, so there will be so many acts of kindness done in your honor. It won't make any difference to the recipients if they occurred before Christmas or after. A few people have emailed me with their acts of kindness, and they are now in your stocking waiting to be read tomorrow morning.

We are in Flagstaff, at the house where I grew up. There is snow everywhere, and it snowed several inches today, too. Caroline is having so much fun with Oma and Tin-Tin, Uncle Marcus, and GG Ma and GG Pa. When Uncle Marcus got here, she jumped up and down, screamed "I so sighted!" (translation: I'm so excited), and ran over to give him the biggest hug ever.

You would be a tiny, cuddly baby right now; it is very cold here, so we would be keeping each other warm. I can't remember if I thought it to myself or said it out loud as I was unloading everything: "I need to hang up the kids' stockings." As I hung up your and Caroline's stockings, I completely lost it. That surprised me, because I did fine when I hung up our family's stockings at our house. It is just so wrong that you are not here.

So far, our time here has been pretty busy. I have been cooking a lot, running last-minute errands, etc. But yesterday, I went for a run.

I was a little concerned about this run. Flagstaff is at 7,000 feet elevation, so I was concerned that the high elevation would make exercise difficult. I also had no idea where to go, because of all the snow; the places up here where I usually run were buried. I planned to run for about an hour. Up at this elevation, I figured I could cover about six miles.

So I found a spot in the neighborhood adjacent to ours. It has changed and grown a lot since I moved away, so I was not entirely familiar with it. I ended up on a trail where I used to run in high school. It was, of course, covered in fairly deep snow. But I went with it, and my lungs held up just fine. I ended up running seven miles, and I didn't fall once!

The trail is slightly secluded from the houses, so it was very quiet: just me, the trees, the snow, and the San Franscisco Peaks. And my music. Several of my favorite, hauntingly beautiful Christmas songs came on. It made me think of Advent (and yesterday, Sunday, was the final Advent Sunday before Christmas): the dark period of anticipating the arrival of Baby Jesus at the darkest time of the year. It has been a very dark time for me this year, because of losing you. But the arrival of Baby Jesus signifies hope: of redemption, of the darkness lifting, of the experience of joy. It seems like the only time I feel hopeful is when I am out running, and yesterday was no exception. For those few moments - exerting myself in the snow, feeling hot and cold at the same time, seeing beauty everywhere I looked, hearing beautiful music, and watching the sun shining on the snow - I felt some hope. And I felt you with me. I wished it would never end.

I didn't run today. But I want to capture that experience again, and I don't know what to do about tomorrow. Tomorrow is Christmas Day. It will be a full day, with presents to open, meals to prepare, family to see, etc. Caroline is excited. Is it unfair to them, selfish of me, to slip out for an hour for a run, to spend some alone time with you? This is where my divided life, my blog title, is most acute: I do not have you and Caroline with me together, and it is excruciating. I constantly have to choose one, to the detriment of the other. And that will never change. Unlike a firstborn child gradually adjusting to the arrival of a new sibling, we will never adjust to you being gone. If you were here, Caroline would likely still be a little out of sorts with her little rival for my affections. But I would be expecting the day to come where she would love having you around. We could spend time together, all of us in the same room, where I could lavish attention on you equally.

But that will never happen, because my two children are in different realms. I cannot bring you two together or reconcile the distance. So I constantly have to go back and forth.

After dinner tonight, we walked over to Oma's chapel to light candles, read the Christmas story, and sing a few Christmas carols. It was dark, cold, and snowing. Caroline didn't seem to mind the cold, and she thought Baby Jesus would be there, in the chapel. Oma had set out bread for communion. Caroline just wanted to eat the bread. Your daddy took communion, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I wanted to be able to do it, but talking directly to God still hurts way too much. He was there, silently with me in the candlelit chapel, but that was as far as I could go tonight. Baby steps, I suppose.

Here is our incomplete family picture, taken after we were finished in the chapel. Although incomplete, it is a beautiful picture with smiles. That is an irreconcilable paradox.

 

I don't know how I'm going to get through tomorrow, and every Christmas for the rest of my life, without you. Living without you is the ultimate paradox.