Even when I don’t open a calendar, don’t ask the dates, don’t search to find what day of the week it is… February 20th surfaces and finds me. I can’t outrun it, I can’t hide from it. I can’t deny the day. It’s etched in the crevice of my heart that I will never be able to forget. 

The sting of grief for me each year is the reminder eternity is set upon our hearts from the beginning of time.

As time evolves you feel the silent pressure that you aren’t allowed to speak her name anymore or go back and remember the day a piece of your heart shattered in a million pieces. I no longer ask the why question, or fight myself asking what I could have done differently to save her. I have surrendered those hard questions in my grief journey. 

But I do let every single emotion of February 20th wash over me, year over year on this day because I want to HONOR her life… 

The sting of death reminds me how much love I carried. 

Grief wouldn’t exist without love. 

You don’t grieve what you don’t love. 

To love deeply is to grieve deeply.

 I don’t want people to forget her. I don’t want to dishonor her life…I want to speak of the beautiful qualities of her. To do that, I must experience and feel the physical sting of loss on this day. Today is when I feel the weight of grief because it’s actually feeling the full expression of LOVE.

I close my eyes. I play out the week… I remember. The fight. The exhaustion.

I remember running out of the ER one afternoon screaming on the phone, “she is dying and no one is taking us seriously. She is dying in my presence and I am helpless.” I remember my mom saying, “I am getting in the car, we are coming. We are coming!”

But it was too late. 

I remember the echoes of screaming and weeping. I will never forget that sound. I didn’t hear it through my ears, I heard it cut through my soul.

I grieve often that my girls will never know her… that another baby, Kezia, is in my home that she will never hold.  My little Brooklyn twirls her hair around her finger just like Aunt Susan.. Her tiny features remind me of her so much. I continue to tell her story. I speak about her freely in our home, her picture sits above our couch and I share her joy with my girls. 

I think of her little grand-babies she never had the chance to hold. But when I see their little faces, I am filled with joy! I think of all the ways she’d love these grand-babies and obsess over their being. 🙂 I see all her prayers that lasted beyond her physical life. Her praying life reminds me, prayers aren’t bound to my frame of time. Prayers are seeds of eternity. 

I write every year as a collection of her legacy. I want to tell her story, to remember, to let her name be said. 

In losing her, even 7 years later, I am learning to love deeper, appreciate every breath on earth, and to keep praying– that prayers aren’t bound by my time on earth. 

We love you and miss you terribly Susan Rene. 

7 years closer to being reunited!

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I saved almost all of our conversations into a file on my desktop. She was always encouraging me…  I opened up the files today and these were the first one I saw…. It encouraged me all over again in this season of life. Her words still imprinting my heart, even from Heaven.