I keep a list of blog post ideas next to my computer. Every time I sit down to write I look at the list and for whatever reason I find myself writing about something that isn’t on it. I find this process of just allowing the words and memories to come to be very healing and it allows me space to really sit in my grief and to fully feel the details of my life before the girls went to Heaven.

There are so many details.

I often wonder why I didn’t appreciate those details more when they were actually happening. I don’t think that anyone ever thinks that maybe there will be a day you won’t have your busy life anymore. I appreciate the fact that I didn’t know my life with the girls here on earth was going to stop.  Our time together was never overshadowed with the fact that they were going to Heaven soon.

Some may say that being able to prepare yourself would be better than having it be so abrupt. I know what I have experienced and can’t speak to having it any other way. I think losing a child, or in my case my children, is hard no matter what. Whether I would have known or have it be just as it was, my heart would still ache just the same.

So here I sit, typing away on my computer, pausing to sit and look out my window and daydream about a time when I heard their voices for real, saw their faces light up when I said we were going to have ice cream for a bed-night snack or simply pulled their hair back off their face so I could kiss their forehead.

There are so many details and so memories. I don’t stress about not remembering because I have found that the memories surface at just the right moment. It truly is quite amazing how God works.

Last night Anna was in my dreams. We were on a boat and I was on the phone telling my brother Jeff that I had Anna with me and I wanted to stop over so she could play with his girls. I wanted Ella and Aubrey to show Anna their fairy door. Of course he expressed confusion and as I looked at my sweet girl sitting, facing me, on my lap I remembered that I was dreaming. She smiled, I pushed her hair back, kissed her on the forehead and then I woke up.

~Details~

I just told Abigail that I would give her a hundred dollars if she picked a piece of gum off the wall and started chewing. Love her expression!

The sun is shining through my window in my new studio space. We have reconfigured some of the spaces in our house to help with the it not feeling so empty. I am upstairs in between Anna and Abigail’s rooms. I can see both of their beds from where I sit. I have their artwork on the walls and favorite photos of them on my desk. Outside of each of their rooms hangs a homemade sign, first Abigail felt the need and Anna followed in her footsteps.

Abigail’s sign reads:

Stranger Danger Knock First Please Abs Room

Anna’s sign reads:

Anna (in very fancy bubble letters) Knock First Please

These personalized signs bring a smile to my face and memory of the girls fighting about going into each other’s rooms. I smile now, I’m sure I was frustrated then. I smile at so many memories of my girls, even when I know I was frustrated at the time. What parent isn’t frustrated with their kids at times?

The other day I was in Anna’s closet, a place that is hard to go. I opened up her dance bag that had her tap shoes and some socks in it, dirty socks, two pairs none matching. I sat on the floor of Anna’s closet and cried remembering that I told her to make sure to take the socks out so I could wash them. I sat with them pressed against my face so glad she didn’t listen to me.

I have a pile of laundry that is sitting on my bed waiting to be folded. It doesn’t have little girl clothes in it anymore, their clothes are all clean and put away except for those socks, they will never be washed.