I typically sit in my house during the day by myself, with no TV on or a radio playing in the background. It is just quiet (other than my puppy and kitty playing). But today I decided to open of Windows Media Center and play some of my songs. Then I go to thinking about Natalie Grant's song. My cousin Tracey had sent me her CD Awaken about two months after Mari had died and the song "Held" struck me right to the heart. These are the words, and to hear the song is even more powerful. I just thought I would like to share these words with you. The parts in [ ] I changed to fit what our situation was. Please let me know what you think of these words and if they had any effect on you like they did me.

Held

Two [weeks] is too little
They let [her] go
They had no sudden healing
To think that providence
Would take a child from [her] mother
While she prays, is appalling

Who told us we’d be rescued
What has changed and
Why should we be saved from nightmares
We’re asking why this happens to us
Who have died to live, it’s unfair

CHORUS
This is what it means to be held
How it feels, when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive
This is what it is to be loved and to know
That the promise was that when everything fell
We’d be held

This hand is bitterness
We want to taste it and
Let the hatred numb our sorrows
The wise hand opens slowly
To lilies of the valley and tomorrow

CHORUS
This is what it means to be held
How it feels, when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive
This is what it is to be loved and to know
That the promise was that when everything fell
We’d be held

If hope is born of suffering
If this is only the beginning
Can we not wait, for one hour
Watching for our savior

CHORUS
This is what it means to be held
How it feels, when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive
This is what it is to be loved and to know
That the promise was that when everything fell
We’d be held

How am I supposed to live my life without her?

How am I supposed to live my life without her? How am I supposed to? I sit here in complete confusion as to how I am supposed to do this. Nothing makes sense to me anymore. I don’t understand. I just simply don’t understand. Mari is gone and yet I am still here. Mari is gone and yet I am just supposed to move on with my life. But Mari is gone. There is not an instruction manual on how to move on with your life once your one and only child is gone from it. I just don’t know how. I wish there was just some tried and true method that would just help you to get over your grief and despair but there isn’t. There is absolutely nothing else on the face of the planet, in this world, that can make this easier.

Time. Is time what is supposed to help me to heal? I seriously doubt it. Time has done nothing for me and I am sure it will continue to do nothing for me in the future. All time is doing is just having the days pass by. I guess you could say time is a stair case. It is a stair case that I climb each and every day. Sometimes the stairs are incredibly steep and narrow, and incredibly hard to climb. Whereas other days, the stairs are incredibly wide and almost flat. The steep and narrow stair days are the day I just don’t know how I am supposed to get through. They are the incredibly hard days or hard times, like what I am going through tonight just trying to go to sleep at 3 in the morning. The wide and flat days are my ok days. Those are the days I can put a smile on my face and not cry. Those are the days I am not thinking about Mari and how much I am missing her all the time. This stair case I am on is a climb I will be on until I die one day and the top of the stair is that day when I have finally reached the top where Mari is waiting for me at the very last stair. She is waiting there for me with open arms. But until that day I am incredibly sad.

It seems like almost every night I am thinking of my beautiful baby girl. Here lately it has been about her last few days on this earth, or the wake and/or the funeral. I just remember looking back at her funeral and realizing that I would never be able to see my little girl again. She is just gone. Yet I am still here to remember her while I am on this earth. How is this possible? It was just not supposed to happen this way. The order is so out of whack. No one is going to ever help me to understand why Mari was taken from me. NO ONE!!! It will never make sense. We try to make sense of loss like this, we as human beings, but there is nothing that makes sense when a mother (or a father) loses a child this early in life, or for that matter, the child dying before the parent does. NOTHING!!!

I sit here almost every night just wishing this was all a bad dream and that tomorrow morning I will be waking up and I will hear her sweet little voice singing in the monitor to wake me up like she had done for so many years. I miss that sweet little voice more than I ever thought humanly possible.

Tonight I sit here in my creative writing nonfiction class and I am having such a hard time concentrating. I just wish I had stayed home tonight instead of coming to class. I feel bad because I was not as prepared as I would normally have been. I had only fully read one of the two stories. I had only ready about the first third of the second story and about the last third. I briefly skimmed through the middle section. I felt totally unprepared when it came to the quiz tonight. He asked three questions from each story. I had the first three down without a problem because I had fully read the story. But that second one is what really had gotten me. The first question I got without a problem only because I felt fortunate enough that right before the quiz I had just flipped the middle part of the story and had read that part. But the second question, I just simply did not know. I didn’t know because I had not read that part. The third and final question I somewhat remember and I was glad I could get five out of the six correct. He only requires 5 correct questions when he asks these to get a 100%. I am just grateful for that.

In our class we are also supposed to workshop two students papers each week. Well, this week we were workshopping two of the professors papers. I felt terrible because I had not read his papers either. I sat here reading one of his essays but had not gotten to the other. When it came time to critique, of course the one I had not read yet is the one we were workshopping first. I was given grief over this but I said, “At least I did lie and say something about it when I had not read it.” I think being honest is more important than just worrying about saying something.

I am so glad this semester is almost over. I need it to be over. I have only class tomorrow, and then Monday and Wednesday of next week for my American Lit II class and my biology class, and then I only have one class left of creative writing after tonight. Then the following week is finals but I only have a final in American Lit class. I am just so glad this semester is basically done.

I miss Mari so much today. I'm not even sure why.

I talked with an old family friend I have known since I was probably about 4 or 5 years old today. She lost a son a couple of years ago so she knows what it is like to lose a child. She is a good person to talk to.

For some reason I keep thinking back to the Saturday, the day after her cerebral hemorage and cardiac arrest, and when the PICU attending told us it was the worst CT scan she had ever seen. How that day it felt like my world had fall out from under neath me. The nurse was a sweetheart that day. She asked if I wanted to lay beside Mari. I said yes. So she moved her over and I went to sleep beside her. That was the very last time I ever got to do that. I just keep thinking about this moment. How special it was to me and just how much I miss her.

We went to Midevil Times last night. It was so much fun. I just keep thinking how much Mari would have loved it and yet she will never be able to see it.

I talked to my grief counselor this past week about whether I should write on this website everyday. I have not been writing everyday because I did not want to sound redundant. She said that what will happen over time is my grief will change as will what I write in here. It will be like all of you are growing with my through my grief. I hope by me posting everyday it will help you to understand me better.

I love you Mari and I miss you so much.
Love Mommy

A friend of mine told me she comes to this website everyday to see what I have posted and is disappointed when there isn't anything. I am going to try something new. I want to try to post at least one thing a day just to let you all know how I am doing. Sometimes I will just tell you how my day went and other times I will write out something like I usually post. I hope everyone will like this. Please keep your comments coming as I love to hear feedback from those who care about me, Mari and Keith. We love all of you.

Today was both a good day and a hard day for me. Keith and I went to Midevil Times. I just kept thinking how much fun Mari would have had if she were still here. She would have loved to see the live horses, the hawk flying around the area, and the different things the knights were doing. On the way home I just got so sad. I started to think about her time in the hospital and just how much I missed her.