Grief isn't just about the past or the individual who is missing. Our present has changed, as well as our future. All aspects of our lives have been turned upside down and look different to how we had mapped them out. Our understanding of ourselves and our identities, as people and as a family, have been unrecognisably flipped. It has taken a lot of strength and adaptation from us all to find our feet and carry our love and grief for Thomas in a different way through life.
This can be particularly difficult in the early years, because you have no way of knowing how you will physically be able to do this, or what it will look like, setting out on a dark path, not knowing where it is heading or for how long you will be following it. Not being able to even begin to imagine where it will take you or how you will travel it. It is made more gruesome in that it is not a path that you choose to take and nor is there any way to detour around it. It must be trodden, and, at times, one step forward and two steps back. Everything about it is wrong and under no circumstances can it be made right. The loss cannot be restored or fixed, you have to find ways to carry it.
Despite this (or maybe because of this), we have found ways to absorb our loss, growing around it, entwined in our new life going forward. So today, I only felt it right to share this reflection
"We talk about them, not because we're stuck or because we haven't moved on, but we talk about them because we are theirs, and they are ours, and no passage of time will ever change that." Scribbles & Crumbs
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