TheYarnTart

One year ago today Kathryn, you, my beloved first daughter died. When you did it was like a gnarled bony hand reached into my heart and ripped out a piece that was bigger than the whole of it. My mind tells me that your passing was in His perfect time, but my heart keeps saying “Too soon, too soon.” As surely as our parents, siblings, spouse and children each hold a special place in our heart, a piece of it is left empty when they are gone. Though your death was impending, still I was unprepared for a pain which would reach a magnitude so great and lay my heart so low. A raw open wound this huge should be visible, but the mirror tells me no one can see it.

In time the edges have become less raw, the surface less pitted and angry. Still there are days the hole is like an open pit mine left unattended after all its valuables have been stripped away leaving only raw earth and rock. Not a trace of the lovely jewels such as you which were once mined there remains. Another day the hole is like a heart, filled with beautiful pictures and precious memories of you. Yet another it’s like a knot hole in a fence board and the wind sings your name as it whistles through. Today it’s a wellspring, a wellspring of faith that I’ll see you again in Heaven. I’ll hang on to this wellspring as long and as firmly as I can, because in the blink of an eye, with no rhyme or reason, that hole can and likely will morph into that open pit mine or worse, the deep dark cave filled with self doubts and self incriminations about my abilities as a mother.

Only with your passing have I realized how much a part of me you have always been, regardless of how far away you were geographically, emotionally or physically. I miss you more than seems possible, and only the knowledge that you are no longer in pain, and the hope that I will see you once again in the hereafter gives me the strength to attempt to live as fully as you lived those days after your diagnosis.

Until we meet again know that I have loved you with all my heart and soul even when my words and actions didn't get the message through. I love you just as much today.

When I hear this song I sing it to you.