Feeling Grateful I’m here.  As I held one of my children, I felt a new sense of gratitude.  The kind of gratitude that one can feel in the presence of a new perspective with an old thought.  I held my boy and realized how much I loved holding him and how much I would miss him had I been the one to have died. 

I felt such a deep sadness that goes along with how it must feel to be separated from this.  I felt how Grant must feel. Instead of feeling the anger towards him for not being here or indignation for his presence being gone or the haughtiness that comes with pride that I am the one doing the hard things so as to feel justified in my indignation; I felt grateful that it was not me who is missing out on this. 

How painful it would be to miss all this.  To miss all the things I shout to him when he is missing them… how does it feel to miss your baby’s 3rd birthday?  And know that you were here for only 2 years of his life and that he will never know you?  How does it feel to miss our family dinner every night? 

How does it feel to never live in this new home I created for our family and how does it feel to watch me create it with joy and passion and know you will never experience this life with us?   How does it feel to watch us snuggle and watch a movie and not be here?  How does it feel to see the boys make the mistakes you did and not be able to help them and teach them and share with them what you should be here to give? 

How does it all feel?  Awful, I’m sure.   And as I contemplate how that would feel for myself to be a bystander in the lives of the people I love most, to watch it all happening and not be able to do anything about the pain; and not be able to share in the joy.  Well that would be a sort of hell that I am so grateful that I do not have to live in.

So in this moment, I felt the aloneness and loss in a different way.  With gratitude that I am the one here to raise the boys alone.  That I am the one here to love them without their dad.  That I am the one to teach them what I’ve learned from the mistakes I’ve made. 

To be the one to snuggle them and watch a movie and be here doing it without you Grant.   To celebrate and plan and give them the birthdays alone.  To feel joyful alone.  To feel the pain of being alone, alone.  That I am here to have it all.

All of a sudden my life feels so very full of blessings that surround me.  I am so blessed to be here.  I realize it through the pain of what he must be feeling, in missing it all.