One year ago today I was recovering from an extremely hectic month that wasn't even over yet. One year ago today I was overflowing with excitement knowing later that afternoon we would be seeing our second child at their first ultrasound. One year ago today I was even imagining it could be twins and what that would be like. One year ago today we were not expecting our world to be completely shaken with life altering news. One year ago today we were not thinking that seeing our child for the first time we would also be receiving a death sentence for our almost eleven week old. Man, does one year fly by or what. 

Wednesday night I found myself sitting in our church nursery with Rowan staring at the baby bouncer with an overwhelming sense of "you should be here!". Our second son should be sitting there in that bouncer just like his big brother did. With tear filled eyes I had to leave. Grief bombs are no joke and when they hit you it's always at a hundred miles an hour, out of no where. I've been in that nursery countless times, holding babies & toddlers, mine and others, but all of a  sudden this grief bomb just exploded. At least with sadness you can usually predict it. A grief bomb is like someone else holding a grenade and you're trying not to think about them pulling the pin out, but you know it will happen... just not sure when. 

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Spoiler for Yellowstone

There is a profoundly popular show that I am sure most of you have heard of, if not watched it for yourself, Yellowstone. If you have not watched, it is a modern day western drama staged in Montana. The main character, John Dutton and his family run a cattle ranch that has been in his family for over a hundred years. Well season five just came out in November and had quite the unexpected bombshell. In season four we found out that John's son, Kayce and his wife Monica are expecting their second child. In the first episode of season five you see Monica go into labor and she calls her husband to let him know. He is off quite a ways so she said she is going to drive herself to the hospital with their first son, Tate. On the way to the hospital her contractions get severely worse so Monica is swerving all over the road then next thing you know there is a bison in the road with an oncoming truck the other way and they end up crashing. We don't see much more there but later on John arrives, knowing of the accident, at the hospital to find Tate his grandson, pretty battered. Tate tells John that he had a brother, for an hour. You can imagine my eyes were sweating a little bit at this point. 

In episode four Kayce and Monica have a funeral service for their son. Once it's all over Monica is sitting next to their son's burial site and John walks over to join her. He begins with reminding Monica he knows how she feels as he had buried his own son just a few yards away. He levels with her about blaming herself as he also experienced that. ( I think we all do even if there was nothing we could have done to prevent it.) He then starts with "I'm going to tell you something I never told anybody." He shares about his little brother, Peter, who lived for eighteen hours. He was born prematurely and ended up passing away. He shares about his mother and how it changed and hardened her. Fast forwarding he goes into when him and his wife had their first son, Lee. Both of John's parents are there taking turns holding the newborn and all a sudden John's dad looks over at his wife (John's mom) and says "Peter lived a perfect life. All he saw on this planet was you and all he knew was that you loved him." I can hardly begin to dip my toe in the pond of how much this resonates with me. As I bang my hand on this desk as I say it out loud I KNOW our son knew how much he was loved. I know it to my core. I feel it in my bones. I truly believe in my heart of hearts he lived as long as he did purely from the grace of God and our love. I believe it and I will believe it for the rest of my life. 

But all of this I write out to point something very specific out. I want you to pay attention to what John said "I'm going to tell you something I never told anybody." Why?  Why hadn't he told anyone?  

Later on in the same episode we see the following conversation take place between Monica and Beth. Beth is John's only daughter.

Beth: “I’m gonna tell you something that I haven’t told anybody, so let’s keep this between us. I know how you feel because I’ve felt it. And I feel it every day. So when I say that I am sorry, Monica, I really mean it.”

Monica: "That's why you're mean, cause nobody knows. Cause you keep that inside of yourself."

Beth: "I keep it inside because of knowing all the people it would hurt."

That! Right there. That is the reason John (and others) don't tell anyone. Or talk about the loss. I feel like that statement summarizes the life of a loss parent. So often we don't speak about our losses because we often wrap ourselves up in what other people are feeling or thinking, but we can't do that all of the time. No one talks about child loss, but we have to. We have to change the stigma around child loss. Yes, it is sad. Yes, it is extremely painful. But let me tell you what's so much worse: Strangers, family, and friends acting and pretending as if our child never existed and thinking that it's for OUR benefit. No, that's not how this works. I'd say easily eight out of ten times if you talk to a loss mama she wants nothing more than to talk about and acknowledge her child. And TRUST ME, I understand, IT'S AWKWARD. What are you supposed to say? Really? Like "oh, is your child still dead?" So yes, it is a difficult conversation to approach, but I would rather you ask me a hard or painful question than pretend the last year did not happen. Pray for us, share Aiden's story and tell us, or when/if you think about Aiden tell us, genuinely ask how we are coping. I give these suggestions in hoping you'll use them for us, but also hoping they give you some guidance in conversing with other loss parents. Maybe start out with learning their stance on if they even are ready to talk about their baby/child first and go from there. 

If you're now thinking about asking me (or we) how I'm "coping"/doing, well you saw my grief bomb from Wednesday night. But I also want to share about the joy bombs. The joy I get from being able to share little tid bits of Aiden with others. Specifically others in the same situation. There are two popular ( in the Anencephaly world) Facebook pages for parents and family members of babies with Anencephaly. I am a member of both. Quite unfortunately there are people joining these groups daily facing their very own "one year ago today", today and finding our groups. They're searching and dissecting every piece of information just looking for a sliver of hope. Though I am unable to offer the hope they're looking for, I am able to offer something. I am able to offer advice, guidance, encouragement and a whole lot of love for them and their baby as they go through this journey. I am able to offer comfort just as so, so many people did for us along the way. There is a saying I read in the beginning of our journey which to me, at the time, didn't make a whole lot of sense but it goes "Your friends become strangers and strangers become friends." And in a way it's true. We saw a handful of people we considered friends become strangers and we saw tons of people we considered strangers become friends. People who have changed our lives.  Some of who understood our journey on a personal level and others who just simply showed compassion and love though they didn't understand. I know a good handful of the people mentioned above are reading this now. For these people I will eternally be grateful. Thank you. All of you. 

3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. - 2 Corinthians 1: 3-4