Friday, July 18, 2014

Another year passes

I have had tremendous trouble getting blogger to cooperate so that I can compose anything again, unfortunately. I'm not even sure this one will work as I attempt it now.

This has been emotionally difficult for all of us this month. Of course, we passed the second anniversary of Micah's death last weekend. Last year, we went camping, but we were still greiving hard. I decided then that we should not face this anniversary alone. This year, we extended an open invitation to all of our friends and family to join us in camping.

Not surprising, not one person in my family even acknowledged this anniversary. They didn't acknowledge it last year. Frankly, they barely acknowledged it when he died. I had low expectations for them, and they delivered in spades.

However, our friends and community which we left when we moved to New England, was there to surround us this last week. Seven friends came with their families. At least that many more wanted to come and simply could not make it. Of those families, three of them were in the circle of friends who were the most steadfast to support us during Micah's life.

There was something so much different to connect with those who loved Micah and came to remember him with us. Rather than the tears and isolation we felt last year, we laughed, we sought joy, and when we remembered it was with fondness and laughter. Micah was one of a kind, of that there is no doubt. These were the real, tangible community that knew him and loved him in life. It felt right that they stood with us to remember him now.

As I embraced one of my closest friends Saturday at the picnic, I realized that I hadn't seen any of these friends in at least two years, most for two and a half years. Moving to New England was so isolating for me, even though the children were happy there. I left my community in the south when I moved there. I have come home now.

Sadly, one of my children is not handling their grief, no more than they are handling other deep-seeded struggles from before the grief. We have some very tough decisions to make and this child has an entire team helping us navigate these waters. Even annonymous in my blogging, I am simply not comfortable sharing details about this child's struggle, for the sake of that child's privacy. However, we traveled to vacation with only seven children, and we continue to navigate with this child's needs for as long as we must do so.

We continue to focus on healing and progress for the entire family, and I'm terribly grateful that we have navigated the anniversary once again without breaking--even though it often feels like we might break as we grieve. So, we focus on moving forward. In one month, all but one of my children will be in public school. It will be my oldest child's last year at home, and my youngest child's first year of school. I will start graduate studies this fall, and II continues to do phenomenonally at his new position. Children are involved in sports. They have friends. We have a grieve center where they get support groups and individual therapy as needed. I have not secured a paying job, but given that I will be in graduate studies full time for the next three years, I am no longer looking for a paying job and have choosen to focus on my non-paying job at the low income clinic. I do intend to put my name in the substitute nurse list for the public schools. Otherwise, I am going to focus on homeschooling my last homeschooler and doing well in graduate school so I can learn all that I need to learn to be a Nurse Practitioner by the time I am done.

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