Dear family & friends,

Time moves differently for the grieving. Three years is an eternity, and it was yesterday. Year three has been about becoming who we are in our new skin without Max in our everyday lives. Meeting him in our joy and our pain is a new way to experience life. Missing him is heavy, an overstuffed rucksack on our backs. Celebrating him is lighter, the wind picking up, wrapping his arms around us. Loving him is right, a peaceful calm for parents of three. 
 
My funniest friend hopes I'll drive too fast down Rockland Street today or have a loyal (or several) in Max's honor. He wants us to laugh. He counts on it and we know he laughs with us when we laugh and cries with us when we cry. Miss you Maxman. Every. Single. Day.

For the last month, I have participated in a grief study through the University of Texas at Austin and Dana Farber. The process involved a grief group setting on zoom with other parents who have lost a child to cancer. Each of us responded to writing prompts about our kiddo. I figured this would be a perfect next step after two rounds of memoir-writing classes. After writing for several weeks, we completed a longer story about our child and were then matched with a music therapist. This resulted in a co-authored song about our loved one who died. I was matched with an incredible music therapist/song writer who took my writing and developed lyrics to a Max Stone inspired beat. I look forward to sharing the song after Jeff and I have an opportunity to share the whole process with Nate & Sam. It's magic and we can feel our boy in every lyric.

I have struggled with celebrating these last several years because Max returned home to Providence on my birthday, to hospice, to begin the march toward death. Today marks three years. What a mystery as a mother to celebrate your own birth and make room for the death of your child two days later. Impossible. There was no stopping the inevitable, and I now carry him as my forever gift.

A birthday poem from a friend feels so fitting:

------------
Let there be a season
when holiness is heard, and
the splendor of living is revealed.
Stunned to stillness by beauty
we remember who we are and why we are here.
There are inexplicable mysteries.

We are not alone.
In the universe there moves a Wild One
whose gestures alter earth’s axis
toward love.

In the immense darkness
everything spins with joy.
The cosmos enfolds us.
We are caught in a web of stars,
cradled in a swaying embrace,
rocked by the holy night,
babes of the universe.

Let this be the time
we wake to life,
as spring wakes,
in the moment of winter solstice.

~Rebecca Parker, California
Prayers for a Thousand Years” compiled by Elizabeth Roberts and Elias Amidon

#maximumjoy
#loveyoulongtime