What Grief Looks Like at 14 Months

I had intended to get this post published on Monday, December 7... 14 months since Isaac was born. It's a few days late, but I still wanted to share these thoughts.

To some, the title of this post may even seem like an oxymoron. How could "grief" and "14 months" even fit together at all? What many people don't realize is that grief is a process. Often times, when a person has finished intensely grieving, others may figure that the grieving is finished. Truthfully, though, it doesn't quite work that way. I am not sure that I will ever be through grieving our loss of Isaac... at least not until that day when I get to see him again in heaven.

Yes, grief at 14 months looks a lot different than it did 14 hours or 14 days after Isaac was born and went home to be with Jesus. It's no longer the piercing, sharp, debilitating pain that seemed like it would last forever. While there are rare moments of that sort of pain that still creep in on occasion, grief at 14 months is more like a dull ache that's always there. The silence of not hearing a newborn baby cry is no longer persistently deafening; but, there is a persistent feeling that someone is missing... because he is. And I still miss him very, very deeply.

I spent some time reading on the M.I.S.S. Foundation's website recently, and in one of the articles I read, a bereaved mother shared this: "Parental bereavement is a permanent condition. The hopes, dreams and aspirations you had for the child now gone is lost forever."

Because you see, while all of the "firsts" this past year... the first Christmas without Isaac, what would have been his first birthday... were incredibly difficult, those difficult moments don't end after the first year. There are many moments still to come... no first steps, no first day of Kindergarten, no first dance, no prom, no high school graduation... and the list goes on.

And while those aren't thoughts that we dwell on, they creep in once in a while. And when they do, bereaved parents grieve again. I also came across this article that explains parental grief quite well. While not written from a Christian perspective, it still does offer a lot of insight into the experience of a grieving parent. I would want to add to this article, though, that there is still hope through a journey of grief... hope in the fact that our God is one of restoration, a God who makes beauty from ashes.

So at 14 months, grief looks a lot different. There are many, many good days... not just as we anticipate Eliana's arrival (did I mention that at my ultrasound last week her estimated weight is already 1lb 7 oz!?!), but as we are just enjoying life a lot more again. But the ache is there, the balance of trying manage polarized emotions persists, and our desire to glorify God through this journey abounds.

Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for He who promised is faithful.

~ Hebrews 10:23