Imagine a beautiful puzzle. However, you can’t complete it because of some missing pieces. Pieces that are crucial to the beauty of the puzzle. As I sit here wondering how to write this post, the only thing that comes to my mind is that life feels incomplete. I’ve spent the past 26 months piecing together what must be the hardest puzzle I have ever put together. Lilly - how did we lose you, when did we lose you, why did we lose you…..
I’ve been trying to open my up heart….And yet here am I again, ripping off another bandaid to reveal a bigger wound. A wound that isn’t going to heal. In all honesty, I don’t think that one can ever stop accepting loss and grief. When I started this blog, my intention was to use it as a way to vent - to let go of everything that weighed heavy on my heart. And yet, all I have done for the past two years is try and put pieces of a puzzle back together.
I tell everyone that I am fine. Yet fine is not at all a word that should be part of my vocabulary. I go through the motions of being present for my family but never quite being there. I’ve begun to realize that on July 11th, 2020 - my daughters not only lost a sister but they also lost a mother. I don't know how to feel 'whole' again. I find myself wondering just how to deal with the surge of emotions that keep seeping in.
All the pieces of my puzzle were there to begin with. And now the crucial pieces of the puzzle are nowhere in sight. Believe it or not, these missing pieces feel like a failure in itself. No one likes failure and I am no different. When even one piece goes missing the whole puzzle is affected and it isn’t held together anymore. It doesn’t look the same anymore. Our family doesn’t look the same anymore.
Losing Lilly has left us in pieces, how do we put ourselves back together again? In grief, we have new pieces to incorporate. It’s complicated, it’s taking time, it’s hard to get it all together. A new picture is beginning to form out of the jumble of mixed up pieces. There will always be missing pieces, and the new picture is never what I imagined it to be.