De Omnibus Dubitandum Est.

You hear that time heals all wounds. This is a lie. The wound of a lost child never heals, but time does anesthetise you to the pain somewhat. You get used to carrying the cross around with you and slowly, you become able to smile again with honesty. The grief is always there though, often very close to the surface. Sometimes I feel my most honest moments are alone with Mary, bathing her, dressing her, when I can just hold her and cry. Cry for joy because God has given her to me, forgiven me, trusted me, saved me. And cry for Ruth, for the overwhelming love I still feel for her and can no longer express in the tactile way that was so every-day just a few brief years ago. These are strange moments, full to bursting with an incredible amount of love, but also excruciatingly painful. A moment when I let my grief out of the secret, carefully hidden box I keep it in for a moment and allow it to engulf me. I wonder what Mary makes of me dissolving into a blubbing puddle of love in the m...

This isn't going to be a long, torturous post. Just something little that happened to me this morning and smacked me right between the eyes. The point of it is to try and put into words the way in which we (people suffering a bereavement) cope. I mean when you loose a child, it just doesn't ever go away. Every day feels as fresh and as raw, as every other. Your loss feels just as immediate, just as visceral, just as poignant as it did yesterday, last week, last year. You might think you get over it, but I don't think that's true (or even possible). Rather you integrate the reality with your every day life. It becomes part of you, somewhat like the way a chronic illness, a scar, or a lost limb becomes part of you. Faced with the enormity of this you might wonder how it is possible to cope at all. To be honest, if one stops to think too long about it, one starts to wonder that as well. To address this, I want to speak honestly about the reality, but also to offer some...