One Year

The year point has now come and gone.

I didn’t want to write a post on the year or even immediately after it, but instead live through it – to see what the other side looked like before looking back. Too much of the grief journey is reactionary to the pain of the moment, but this journey has been – for lack of a better word – sacred.

So I want to give the journey the honor that it has, unfortunately, earned.
Because this has been a sacred journey that has forever changed – and continues to change – everything in my world.

September 28 through October 5 will likely be a week every year that is full of sorrow for our family. It will always sit in our family’s history as one of trauma and heartbreak. The 28th being the day that he died, and the 5th being the day that we publicly said goodbye to him at his funeral.

A week of indescribable agony that began a year of so much more.

. . .

The one-year “anniversary” was not something I could honor in the way others might. My energies and my soul were consumed with caring for my family – my wife and four kids. I had to make sure they were tended to, cared for.
They are my world – what’s left of it.

I won’t go into the details of how we spent that day – that’s not important to the story – but just know that we spent it together. I spent the time on guard for the emotions and needs of everyone else in my family, so that they could simply be. That isn’t said in resentment – quite the opposite, actually.
It’s said in recognition of the sacred responsibility I carry as a father – the spiritual honor of sharing that title with the Father.

For me, tending to my family has been what has kept me stable (if that’s even the right word) this year. It has given me focus in a season when I wanted to do nothing of the sort. Being a father will do that to you regardless, but through tragedy like this, you discover who you really are.

These kinds of trials reveal otherwise unknown parts of who you are – or, in the spiritual sense, who you were designed to become.

. . .

October 5th turned out to be my day to mourn the year – though I hadn’t planned it. I finally had some time to myself for the first time that week – not intentionally – and then it just hit me out of nowhere… well, not exactly nowhere, but it was my stupid cell phone.

I could go on a rant about the downsides of technology, but that’s not the point of this.

My phone decided to give me a “memory” video of my son “through the years,” using photos from each October stored on my phone. The photos alone were enough to make me tear up, but the last one – the final image in that slideshow – was from his funeral.

It was a picture of his portrait, the one that hangs in our house… but this time it was resting on a chair in the room we sat in before and after the service.
It was the last photo I ever took of him – even though he was already gone.

And I sobbed.
Not just cried – sobbed.
Uncontrollably.
The “ugly cry” my wife calls it. For about fifteen minutes, alone, curled up on the floor.

I don’t think I’ve ever cried that hard in my life.

It was one year to the day since the world said goodbye to my son.
And I’m still not okay.
Pretty sure I never will be.

That’s the truth that has finally settled in: I am not the same man I was a year ago – and I never will be again.

. . .

This type of journey is horrific. If you’re reading through my posts as someone walking a similar road, I am so sorry. I wish I could offer some promise that things will get better – but maybe “better” isn’t what we’re really seeking.

Life is full of joy and beauty, but also pain and suffering. It’s part of being human. Some of us get a disproportionate mix of each, but we all have to play the cards we’re dealt. The question isn’t if we’ll face pain and loss – it’s how we’ll endure it, and how we’ll grow through it.

As I’ve shared before, I’ve anchored myself to my faith – and I would urge you to do the same.
It’s the only way I’ve been able to keep moving – not moving on, but moving forward – toward whatever lies on the other side of this sacred, sorrow-filled journey.

This journey has begun to feel more like a sacred scar and less like an open wound. It will never fully heal, but it will always serve as a reminder – of love, of loss, of transformation. A reminder of the journey itself. A journey that I am not alone in. And if you are walking such a path, I can promise you this: neither are you.

Father of the Stone