The song about those days -

Last Sunday our church played the song I've been avoiding for 14 months. 

The minute I saw in the bulletin that we'd be singing it, my heart started to race. "Be still...be still." I sat there whispering to my heart. I told myself to just sit and take it in. I told myself I'd be fine. 

I told myself I'd let it wash over me like rain, and I didn't have to sing if I couldn't. 

I begged the quiet to not be the version I'd spent those days...those days when he'd just gone to Heaven, and I was begging God it wouldn't be true. Those days I packed my suitcase and then re-packed it because it was too heavy, and I was short with my Daddy because my heart hurt so badly I couldn't breathe. Those days I watched the wings go up in FL and come down in a land that I'd spent with my hands splayed across Audra's belly and felt Avery kick.

 The land I'd loved and talked and sang in the kitchen and prayed that the loss of Melody would one day be less hard, and there would be a beautiful joy in the coming of Avery. The land that held Melody's grave and her grave only, and the land that Avery's Daddy sang the wedding song to Audra and Avery moved and kicked and I knew it was a holy moment. It was the Tennessee land, and when the wingtips came down in TN in the heat of the June summertime, I walked off knowing there would be another grave next to Melody's.

June 9, 2012

Those days hurt more than I describe. And that song played through it, because it was all that would get me through. It played in the sweet Mustang we got to drive around....it was playing at that stoplight in the dark, when I waited for the light to turn green in the middle of TN and for life to stop hurting so bad. That song is what I repeated in my head over and over when I wanted to scream and cry and be anywhere but there, when I wanted anything but this reality that was their life. That song was my lifeline through pain to God. But that song was the reminder of all that suddenly went wrong. 

That song meant all the the hurt, the screams, the sobs, the pain, the heartbreak would be sitting right in front of me, a whole church full of voices singing it, and all of it memories I couldn't bear.

So that song was the last thing I wanted to hear. 

The first chords on the piano cut my heart right open. I don't think anyone but the Lord heard the moan from my throat. Tears were sliding down my cheeks before I knew to breathe. The first few words, and I gasped aloud, a sob breaking the silence. I could see Mama look over, and I stood up and walked out. 

I walked into that dark classroom and the pain took over. I sobbed my heart out. 

Because it's been 14 months and 12 days and my heart that rejoiced in the coming of Avery was broken in the moment that he was gone, the loss of dreams and the loss of the son of my dear friends. All I dreamed of, prayed for, wanted for Avery .... gone. And it's been 14 months and 12 days and I'm still reeling in shock and I'm still hoping every morning I wake up that it was a bad nightmare. 

I could hear the chorus and the voices singing .... but all I could see was my final look back, that hill that held those sweet babies I'd adored and loved and prayed for since I knew they were alive. 

I'm not sure when I'll be able to listen to that song again. I'm not sure when I'll be able to sing it again. 

Grief has a very sad and hard way of unexpectedly finding you in life, and shattering your heart into pieces. 

This week I'm just struggling all over again to find my feet in the reality that he is gone. 

Because for one brief split second, when I begged the song to be a different one.....

my heart was also begging it to not be true. 

As always, when I write about Avery and what he means to me...for anything you pray for me, please pray 10 times more for John and Audra. I love you both so much. 

With love always, 

~ Jemmie ~