{"id":4927,"date":"2015-03-18T22:02:57","date_gmt":"2015-03-19T02:02:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/?p=4927"},"modified":"2015-03-18T22:02:57","modified_gmt":"2015-03-19T02:02:57","slug":"temporal-darkness-eternal-light-one-year-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/2015\/03\/temporal-darkness-eternal-light-one-year-in.html","title":{"rendered":"Temporal Darkness & Eternal Light, One Year In"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"The-Lewises\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Olivia and Emma died a year ago today. It didn\u2019t seem like it could possibly be real then, but time brings the weight of reality to tragedy.<\/p>\n

We have their prayer cards on our refrigerator. In the morning every day I look at their faces and say a prayer for Sean, Becca, and Vivian. It\u2019s not much, but it\u2019s important to carry their grief through my days in some kind of tangible way. It\u2019s always in my heart \u2014 no single day has gone by in this last year when I haven\u2019t thought of them.<\/p>\n

Emma and Sienna were born on the same day, five years apart. On her birthday this year, the first thing we did was watch a video of Emma\u2019s last birthday that her aunt had put on facebook. It was the most adorable thing I\u2019ve ever seen, Emma lisping through a song she had made up for her birthday about how she is a big girl now, but getting more insistent with every rendition. Sienna laughed, and I cried.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m crying now, of course. I\u2019ve been wrestling for days with whether I should write about this at all. Grief is a strange thing when it doesn\u2019t quite belong to you \u2014 I almost feel guilty, like I don\u2019t have a right to these tears or these words. I wasn\u2019t family, or even a close friend. I only knew Olivia as a baby, and never even met Emma. But their loss was so great and the grief so heavy, even after a year. If anything it\u2019s grown heavier with time, as their deaths have settled into reality and become a thing that is, rather than a thing too horrible to be true.<\/p>\n

While I was making cinnamon rolls for Sienna\u2019s birthday, she asked me if I was going to cry on her birthday every year, now. The question startled me. I didn\u2019t know what to say, and I felt terrible. I started to apologize, but she said, \u201cIt\u2019s okay. I\u2019m glad me and Emma have the same birthday, and I was thinking that maybe we could celebrate her birthday, too. I just don\u2019t want you to cry\u2026but it\u2019s okay if you do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Later I was texting about it with my friend Andrea<\/a>, who said, \u201cWe cry for Becca and Sean and that\u2019s okay, because it is all we can do for them. We can\u2019t fix it or make it better, but we cry and remember that their loss is part of all of us as a whole.\u201d I think that\u2019s true. They lost their daughters, and Vivian lost her sister, and they have to bear the weight of that grief. The rest of us can\u2019t make it any easier for them, but we grieve, too, because that\u2019s what it is to be human.\u00a0 We carry their loss with us as best we can, because that\u2019s what it is to be part of the body of Christ.<\/p>\n

But we also remember that God has promised us that death is not the end. So we hope with them, too, and rejoice at the thought of them being reunited with Emma and Olivia one day. Until then, our prayers go with them.<\/p>\n

I began to know my story then. Like everybodys, it was going to be the story of living in the absence of the dead. What is the thread that holds it all together? Grief, I thought for a while. And grief is there sure enough, just about all the way through. But grief is not a force and has no power to hold. You only bear it. Love is what carries you, for it is always there, even in the dark, or most in the dark, but shining out at times like gold stitches in a piece of embroidery.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2013<\/em>Wendell Barry, Hannah Coulter <\/em>(respectfully lifted from Sean\u2019s facebook page)<\/p>\n