The final struggle that I discussed that day with Father Wyble was an issue that has consumed much of my thoughts and time since I lost Lizzy. It is the question of my vocation. For nearly 15 years, I have believed that being a wife and a mother was my vocation. With the birth of…
The day before Cecilia was born, tears streaming down my face, I remember repeating to Father Wyble, “I just need her to come home to me.” After a pause, he responded quietly, “We have to remember that this is not home.” What do you do with that? What do you do with the idea that…
There were four major takeaways from my conversation/confession with Father Wyble the day before I went into labor with Cecilia. And I return to these four concepts again and again, as I try to process my grief. The first concept is that the death of Lizzy is my cross, which I will carry for the…
Many times, I have mentioned the priest who has been with me through the death of Lizzy and the birth of Cecilia. He is the priest who came to the hospital to administer Anointing of the Sick to Lizzy and who came to the house five hours after Cecilia was born to baptize her, both…
“I’m never going to let anything happen to you.” Swinging and dancing, a 4-month old Lizzy in my arms, a rush of love swells over me; I hug her tightly to my chest, kiss her sweet face, and whisper fiercely, “I’m never going to let anything happen to you.” Awake in the frozen night, my…
I’ve been watching every DVD that I own as part of the fruitless and often ineffective system of distraction that I’ve developed. In this process, I discovered that I had three copies of Hamlet. So I watched all three. What I remember about Hamlet from my brief highschool obsession with it was that Hamlet, though…
Attending weekly mass has been a struggle for me since I lost Lizzy. This is not because I am losing my faith or angry at God. For whatever reason, that has not been my experience. I do not believe that God is responsible for Lizzy’s death; I believe that we live in a fallen world…
On the evening of my 33rd birthday, when Cecilia was 4 weeks old, I attended my first grief support meeting with the Compassionate Friends. I have since attended these monthly meetings with other broken and bereft parents looking for answers. At the meeting last night, I sat there thinking how most of us were never…
In December of 2018, I separated from my husband and Lizzy and I moved in with my older sister. As a welcome-home gift, she gave me a white pot with the word “Hope” in black letting across the front. She said she thought it was an appropriate sentiment for what I was going through. I…
For the past five months, I have been having this recurring dream, or, rather, I’ve been dreaming a scene in a dream that is recurring, although I arrive there from different dreams on different nights. It is twilight, somewhere between sunset and dusk, and there is a glassy body of water in front of me,…