So many have said repeatedly “it gets easier.” Some who also have a child living In Heaven have actually attached the words I promise to the statement. How can you promise that? 

Maybe it got easier for you but it will never be easier for me I thought. But I can’t deny yesterday. God seems to have made the human heart for memories. Do we ever go to an annual event that we don’t drift back to ” last year” in our minds? 

It floats along. . .what we were wearing. . . How big the kids were. . . That thing that made us laugh. . . Made us cry. . . We revisit the thoughts in our mind. The experience of being there. 

There was play day last year.  And I don’t remember what I was wearing . Don’t remember the kids events or what they looked like even. I remember it was foggy on a clear spring day. But only foggy if you happen to be me. Because I was in a fog.  I Felt like  my feet were heavy as though too big for my body or  covered in thick muck. I remember that it felt like everyone was staring at me or pitying me or analyzing me.  

Each little baby or little girl For that Matter was a reason to hold my breath and retreat further in.  I was fragile and it felt too windy for fragile. 

But a year later, I’m back there because that’s what moms do and I’m still a mom.  So thick and foggy or crystal clear, I will be there. But it’s not as foggy. I’m a little less Sad and a lot more clear.  The little babies don’t hurt so much and the little toddlers hurt a little more.  I’m somehow very present and engaged with the boys and still have a part of my heart in heaven. I’m getting good or at least better at multi tasking deep tasks of the soul. 

And tomorrow is Mothers Day #2 without my sweet rosy little soul sister. Now God in His kindness is filling a deep well in my heart with great joy tomorrow. My passion is getting baptized and there’s just no way sadness will find me On that sacred day.  But even if that weren’t the case, the parts of my soul that couldn’t stop screaming last year. . . Well they’ve quieted a great deal. They rest more peacefully. They are well. 

Does that mean I do not hurt? No, most assuredly I say to you that I ache and there are still times of great pain when salt is sprinkled into the layers that remain open.  

The mom and daughter getting their nails done together at the nail shop.

  The mother daughter bracelet set at the Christian book store. 

The card my son made me that is missing one name.  

The unusual desire to go to the cemetery. 

And all these stinking roses everywhere. Usually a comfort but strangely dissatisfying this weekend. 

It’s painful. And there’s still some hallowed out pockets of emptiness that are yet to be filled. 

 But they sure are better. I’m better. It’s better. I guess they could make such crazy promises because that’s what God does and He always delivers.