More thoughts and points from the book

"I have probably always heard stories of people losing loved ones in their lives, but until I experienced loss myself, I did not listen intently to them or let those stories penetrate. I am more sensitive to the pain now. "
When you hear of other people's losses, whose loss is worse? "Each experience of loss is unique, each painful in its own way. but also different. No one will ever know the pain I have experienced because it is my own, just as I will never know the pain others may have experienced." Even my own children's pains are different than my own. I'll never really deeply understand their pain of losing their father at the ages of 20, 18, 15 and 9.

"Sudden and tragic loss leads to terrible darkness. However threatening, we must face it, and we must face it alone. Even though I didn't want to, I had to plan a memorial service. I had to bury him. I had to care for my four children who were sad, terrified and confused.

I couldn't view Travis' body. I just couldn't get myself to look at him in that state. I know he wouldn't want me to. My last memory of Travis was the morning that he left for hunting. I was still laying in bed and he got dressed. He was all ready to go and came out of the bathroom then over to me in the bed to say good bye. As Travis bent over the bed to give me a kiss, I pulled him down on me so that I could more hold him than just give him a quick hug and kiss. He let me hug him for a few seconds, then he kissed me and walked out the door down the hall.
Abigail told me that the same morning, Daddy came to her and said good bye with hugs and kisses before he left. I'm so thankful for those memories of our last moments together! They are what gets me through the days. When It came to seeing him after he passed, I didn't want my last memory of him replaced. Also, I knew I would want to climb into that casket with him and refuse to let go! I know that Travis knows all of this and understands. I don't feel you have to be in front of someone's casket looking at them to say good bye.
I do have a hard time going to the cemetery, because it's hard to imagine that his body is lying in the ground! I did, though, on our anniversary, go down and get the headstone put into action. Hopefully by December, Travis' burial site will be as perfect as can be.

"I have the power to choose the direction of my life. Even if the only choice open to me was to either run from the loss or face it as best I could. Since I knew that darkness was inevitable and unavoidable, I decided to walk into the darkness rather than try to outrun it. I had to allow myself to be transformed by my suffering rather than to think I could somehow avoid it. I can't always determine the proper time and setting for tears, which occasionally come at unexpected and inconvenient moments. I am surprised to see how inoffensive this is to others. If nothing else, it invites others to mourn their losses with me.
Still, I try to reserve time and space in my life for solitude so that I can descent into the sadness alone. At night, in bed, after everyone is off to bed. I often take Travis' pictures to bed with me and look through them while I talk to him, cry, miss him and remember him.
This nightly solitude, as painful and demanding as it is, is sacred to me because it allows time for genuine mourning and intense reflection. It also gives me freedom during the day to invest my energy into teaching and caring for my family. I am often tired, but I find the strength- God's gift to me- to carry on despite getting little sleep.
**During these evening rituals, it often kills me just imagining what Cole went through to be there with his father as his spirit left and what life is like for him without his best friend!

At first, this sense of darkness so preoccupied me that I found myself unable to concentrate on things that needed my memory. I became a robot programmed to perform certain functions that I was able to do quite well because of habits developed over many years.

I have found that "the defining moment can be OUR RESPONSE to the loss. It is not what happens TO us that matters as much as what happens IN us."

I lived in the sadness and found within that pain the grace to survive and eventually grow. The book I've been reading describes this perfectly: "I absorbed the loss into my life, like soil receives decaying matter, until it becomes a part of who I am. Sorrow has taken up permanent residence in my soul and enlarged it. A willingness to face the loss and to enter into the sadness is the first step we must take. We don't always have the freedom to choose the roles we must play inlife, but we can choose how we are going to play these roles we have been given. Choice, therefore, is the key. If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering."

This book helps describe things so well!
"The soul is elastic, like a balloon. It can grow larger through suffering. Loss can enlarge its capacity for anger, depression, despair and anguish, all natural and legitimate emotions when we experience loss. Once enlarged, the sould is also capable of experiencing greater joy, strength, peace and love. What we consider opposites - east and west, night and light, sorrow and joy, weakness and strength, anger and love, despair and hope, death and life- are no more mutually exclusive than winter and sunlight. The soul has the capacity to experience these opposites, even at the same time."
"We must mourn, but we must also go on living."

"It is obviously impossible for me to express sorrow every time I feel sorrowful. I don't want to surrender myself completely to the whims of raw emotion. I cry sometimes, in public setting, and I will. But even then I can regain composure and carry on with normal activities. I learn to live and mourn simultaneously. The sorrow I feel won't disappear but will be integrated into my life as a painful part of a healthy whole.

The book describes this integrating as being like a tree stump after the tree is cut down from it. The stump will always remain there in the Earth. "The stump represents my loss. You plant around the stump. Work around it. Plant trees, shrubs, flowers and grass. Watch everything grow. With time, the stump still remains, reminding of the beloved tree that was lost. But the stump is surrounded by a beautiful garden of blooming flowers and growing trees and green grass. Likewise, the sorrow i feel remains, but I will try to create a landscape around the loss so that what was once ugly is now an integral part of a larger, lovely whole."

I want to gain as much as I can from the loss without neglecting ordinary responsibilities. I want to integrate my pain into mine and my children's lives in order to ease some of its sting I want to learn wisdom and grow in character.