Today my heart is in all places at once. I am excited about Christmas on the verge of joyful bittersweet tears. Yet my heart also aches.
It's been awhile since I have felt this joy despite the heart wrenching emotions that "naturally" come with missing Lilly.
Of course there is no doubt I wish she were here to celebrate the birth of Christ with us. To open presents. To join in our family traditions.
I am also mourning the loss of another sweet life gone too soon this holiday season as well as the 26 lives who so recently and painfully left this world.
I think about the beginning of my journey after Lilly died and my heart aches thinking of the parents who have started their own journey after the loss of their child. As well as the heartache the siblings feel beginning their journey without their brother or sister.
I feel for every one of them.
So while this is a joyous Christmas for me just a month and a half shy of the three year mark since Lilly died, it is also still a sad one. It will always be both.
I wish the families who have been asked to walk through life without their loved ones as much joy and peace during this holiday season.
Though it may sound odd for me to say I still can feel joy along with this pain of having to survive a child, I don't feel that it means I miss her any less. In fact, I feel closer to how I felt when Lilly was here, than I have in awhile. I still miss her, I will always miss her. There will always be a lump in my throat, a hole in my heart so long as I live.
I have always said I want her life to be bigger than her death and the joy I feel today coincides with my wish for that to be how she is remembered.
