It only took ninety-two minutes to change my life. That ninety-two minutes broke and rebuilt me. And I mean that in every sense possible when it come to the human body. Not only did I physically feel my heart break, but I felt my soul shatter, and my mind become insane. From the darkest moments came the most life altering lessons.
Death is Real. I spent most of my life thinking death would never find me, but not just me, it wouldn’t find my parents, my husband, or my son. In my head death just wasn’t an option for us, there was no way I would lose the people who meant the most to me. I had even watched as my husband suffered the pain of losing his father, I watched the strongest man I know become like a child needing his father, I was there in that ER waiting room with him as the doctors did everything they could to save him but with no outcome of life.
I had never experienced its magnitude, its indiscrimination, its ruthlessness, until now. I watched death take what was mine, and there wasn’t anything at all I could do about it. I picked out the casket, I picked out the dress for her, and on the day she was laid to rest I made the longest walk from my car to her resting place, all eyes on me, waiting to wake up from this nightmare. But I didn’t wake up, it was a nightmare that I was living, death had found a way into my life and I couldn’t hide anymore. Death made my world crumble; death stole my peace. But the greatest thing death had done was teach me that it was real. One day death and I will meet but its up to me where I spend eternity. I want everlasting life.
As cliché as it may sound, life is short. The time we spend on earth is fleeting. We aren’t promised another day, or even another second for that matter. Treasure the moments you get, make memories, take pictures. Forget the housework, I promise it can wait. If only we knew what the future holds, because than I think we would spend our time filling it with memories rather than with the “should have done’s”.
Once I stopped worrying about my dirty floors, the pile of laundry in the basket, and the things I don’t and probably wont ever have, my life became much more alive than it had ever been. My life became slow and quiet, and that’s the beauty of it, when things around you aren’t moving so fast and the noise isn’t so loud, you beginning to notice the beauty of your life that’s been right in front of you the whole time.
You will find a new “normal”. After experiencing something with enough magnitude to change your life, you won’t be you anymore. Don’t get me wrong you will still be yourself in many ways, but not all. Physically you’ll appear to be untouched, but beneath the smiling face, the freshly done make-up, and the “I’m fine”, you’ll be at war with your thoughts, and for a while you won’t be able to make sense of any of it. But trust me when I tell you, it won’t always be this way. When your mind and your heart are finally at peace with each other, you’ll realize the “new you” isn’t so bad after all. The things that once mattered, you won’t think twice about anymore because they never really mattered all. The things that used to shake your inner most being, won’t scare you like they used too. Fear doesn’t wear that same scary mask it used too. For you my Dear, know the difference in what this life is really all about, you know what is important.
Feel Your Emotions. There is no guide to grief, and we all do it in different ways. Some people do it quietly, others need to scream, yell, and maybe even break things, and both ways are fine. Our feelings, our emotions come from the Lord, and we need to embrace them, we need to give those feelings a voice. If you feel like crying, cry. If you feel like screaming, scream. If you feel like breaking something just to feel the force of two things crashing into each other, then break something and watch it shatter. I can remember feelings so much rage inside of me, so much anger that I could take a match to my house, sit back, and watch it burn. I wanted to feel the heat against my face and listen to the crackle of the fire burning down what I thought my life should be like. But after the smoke clears, and the flames inside of me begins to die, I can see a new day coming and I am thankful for it.
Grief. Have you ever heard that silence is deafening? I now understand just how true that is. Grief is heavy, it knows no bounds. I have never faced such a dark enemy till grief invaded my peace, invaded my life, and it came to steal, kill, and destroy my hope. From time to time I go back to that place. More often than not. I go to a place of deep, deep sorrow and pain. It’s an agonizing miserable place but sometimes I love to dwell there because it means I haven’t forgotten what it’s like to love and lose, because I’d rather feel the pain than nothing at all, but I can’t stay there. I have a life beyond this thief of joy, I must bring my head above the waves and take a deep breath because my grief and peace can live together.
How to Love. If death and grief taught me anything at all, it’s how to love. Love is an action verb, that’s always what my mom told me growing up and I never really understood what she meant, that is until now. When you lose a part of yourself, when your world shatters, and everything you thought you knew turns to question, your forced to reexamine everything about your life. When the sun came up, and the world kept spinning, and I had nowhere to hide, I was forced to stop and look at my life. Some parts, I liked and others I wanted to pretend I didn’t see them.
I loved selfishly, I loved untimely, I loved for my gain. Instead of taking the time to stop what I was doing and watch what my son so desperately wanted to show me, I said, “In a minute.”, but that minute never came. Instead of giving our marriage the attention it needed we continued to bury our faces in our phones and our minds in the lives that played on the screen before us. But now, how things are different. When my son asked to play basketball in the Livingroom, we play like it’s the NBA. When He asks to play nerf wars, we hide behind the island in the kitchen while his dad showed no mercy. And when my husband comes home after a long day at work, I’m more concerned about how his day went instead of the people of Facebook. When I am failing to keep my world around me from crashing, he is who I want beside me, to hold me and tell me everything is going to be okay, even if he doesn’t fully believe it himself.
I’ve realized my love knows no bounds, that my love can rebuild the foundation of all things broken in my life, and theirs. So, yes, it is very true, love is an action verb. We can say I love you till we are blue in the face, but love without action is only words. Meaningless, empty words.
It won’t kill you. Just trust me. When you can’t catch your breath, when you can’t pick yourself up from the bathroom floor, when you can’t find a way out of the darkness, I promise you will find that next breath, your feet will find their balance, and you won’t be lost in this place forever. I have spent time in the depths of grief, and felt its physical pain squeeze my heart and steal the air from my lungs. I have cried in my pillow while the world around me slept. I have screamed, I have begged, I have wrestled between my thoughts and my faith. I thought if the pain doesn’t kill me, my insanity will. When the misery tries to consume you, fight. You fight like your life depends on it because it does. You will find strength in your weakness. You can do the impossible you thought would destroy you. It will bring you to your knees, but that’s exactly where you need to start.
There is a God. Growing up I knew there was a God, and I thought all we had to do was accept Him into our hearts and ask for forgiveness of all our sins, and short-comings, simple as that and nothing else. I was mistaken and it took losing a part of myself to realize that. I was lukewarm, and I quickly learned I couldn’t be any longer if I wanted to see her face again.
I won’t lie there were times I wondered if there was a God, and if there was then He’s not doing what I thought a good God should do. Looking back, I hate that I ever thought that, I mean, how could I? I see God in the smile of my son, in the sun rising, in the fact I wake up each morning. He was there when I faced what I thought would kill me. But what I thought would kill me, saved me.
When I was at my lowest, thinking I’d never overcome this is when I found a relationship with the Lord. I hit my knees, ugly cried out to Him and left my unanswered questions, and weight I wasn’t supposed to carry at His feet. Instead of searching for the rhyme and reason, I trust His will and His purpose, and found mine; My story is for His glory.
92 minutes saved my life. Like I said, 92 minutes broke and rebuilt me. On June 6, 2019 at 10pm our daughter was born and at 11:32pm our daughter died. Her name is Elliott Ruelisha Cole Burkhart she was diagnosed with anencephaly at 16 weeks gestation, and I carried her till I went into labor at 34 weeks and 2 days. My 3-pound 4 ounce, 13 inches long little girl saved my life, and because she did, I know I will see her again one day.
I know a lot of people would think that I’m crazy for believing there is a God, and that if anything losing my daughter would do the complete opposite, but that’s clearly the farthest from the truth. You see, I could have never of met my daughter at all, I could have gone my whole life without knowing the kind of love I could give. I could have lost her before I got to hold her alive in my arms. I thank God her made me her mother. I would have rather felt the pain of losing her than to never of known her at all.
Until we met again, my sweet Girl.
Love, Mom
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