The Surprises of Grief

Peter's cousin Wofgang Schneider in Heidelberg, Germany, and his family, sent this beautiful candle in remembrance of Leif. The poem on it says:

I'm not there
anymore
where I've been
but I'm everywhere
you are
In the night
I'm the stars sparkling light
On every day
I'm the sunlight's ray
shining
on you.

It's such a beautiful thought, and I wish it to be true. But Oh, how I miss my son!

There are things no one ever tells you about grief, not just missing the person, or wondering why this had to happen, and all that goes with those feelings. Other things sneak up on you unawares.

We got our wills redone yesterday. It's true that it's a formality, because it won't change anything about our heirs, but it seemed so sad and so lonely to put down just one son's name, as though I only had one son. I know that's not the reality of it, just that only one is still here to inherit whatever I have to leave behind when I die, but it's the meaning of writing down that there's only one now. In 33 years, I've never put down just one name.

How grateful I am that I have Peter Anthony, that he is my son.

Yet how hard it is to see Leif being erased from one document after another.

In choosing the photos to put on this blog, I find there are few of me with my sons. I was the one taking so many of the photos. I wish now I had more showing us together.

I also see how fast I am racing through the 33 years of Leif's life. Of the photos I scanned for the "slide show" I made of his life I'm nearly through the first year of his life. There are so many, many more I didn't scan and can't go back and do now. It's going to seem odd to post Christmas photos in June, but that's what I will do since I want a little continuity about his childhood in the blog.

My mother-in-law, who died in 2002, used to ask why we took so many pictures. I am so glad we did. They aren't enough.