All my Audrey Memories in May


It's been almost nine months.  We have been through Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, Valentine's Day, and Easter.

As May comes up, my birthday is coming up.  The thing I am going to miss the most is Audrey blowing out my candle on  birthday cake. She loved blowing out the candle even if it wasn't her cake. For Audrey's birthday, Amanda and I (along with the support of our family and friends) are excited to dedicate some things that would make Audrey and her friends happy.  May ends with a way that we are going to celebrate Audrey's birthday.


In the immediate weeks after Audrey's passing, we wrote in a the book that the hospital Child Life Services made us with Hannah and Audrey's hand prints.  That lasted a few  weeks into each of us writing in the book nightly.

When we got 1 page away from being filled, we transitioned to other ways of going over our memories.

I started this blog in January as a way to share memories of Audrey.  

In March, Mandy, Hannah, Bruno and I joined some guests on a hiking challenge to raise money for the Epilepsy Foundation.  It was a great way to feel connected to Audrey.

In my recent post about bike riding memories, I mentioned how Mandy started writing memories of Audrey's life.  Mandy has a pretty comprehensive history from birth to epileptic relapse so far.  We were really touched by the response of your favorite memories of Audrey.

I feel most connected to Audrey, when I write more (here and to Audrey), so I have decided to challenge myself to share a memory of Audrey every day in May.  It may be a chronological memory of a moment in time like the bike ride, or a set of thematic memories, like remembering Audrey's sense of humor.  Her Birthday is May 29, so I will end with memories of Audrey's birthday.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The last first? Sometimes the second is harder than the first.

Image
I started writing this post on Monday July 15th after experiencing many firsts and seconds on as we approach the anniversary of Audrey leaving for heaven.   This post took me over three weeks to write.  I had to think about why it took so long and the truth is, I am not on the same calendar that I used to be. I knew the fourth of July was going to be hard.  Audrey loved the fourth.  On social media, Mandy posted pictures of Audrey enjoying all of her summer favorites.  From June 26th to July 4th, Mandy posted a different picture of Audrey's summer favorites.  Starting on July 1st, she posted a daily picture of Audrey loving the fourth of July. Those pictures meant a lot and meant a lot to see Audrey's loved ones interact and share summer memories.  When Mandy took Hannah to the bathroom, I looked to my phone to look at pictures of Audrey.  I was surprised when I found this picture. This picture made me smile for many reasons 1. It encapsulate...
Read more

It Doesn’t Get Any Easier (Amanda's)

Image
  When we first lost Audrey, people often said, or we read in grief books, how in child loss it doesn’t get any easier. There was always some variation of:  It’s hard to know what “it doesn’t really ever get any easier” means when you’re first in the throws of it though, and the shock is so intense. I’ve also come to understand that for me, personally, the shock has been profound and longer lasting than for some others. 15 months in, it’s still really hard for me to grasp most days that Audrey is gone, and that it’s permanent. But it truly isn’t any easier than it was in those first weeks. Which is really hard to fathom if you think about it- How can our world still be as rocked and shaken as it was then, how can this still be as painful and sad and traumatic as then?- Yet it still is. The sadness seems only to grow deeper and the fullness of missing all of who Audrey is continues to grow in our lives. Our family wasn’t complete before she came into our lives, and now we a...
Read more

(Amanda's) Disorganized Thoughts- Approaching One Year

Image
I can’t believe it’s almost been a year without Audrey. I’ve tried several times in the past year to write, but I can never quite put my thoughts together into anything coherent to share. Many of you that are closest to me have listened to me attempt to share about grief in the past year- I appreciate your patience and understanding as I ramble on, sometimes with emotion and sometimes without, tend to ruminate over the same thoughts again and again, and try to capture the ways that I am missing Audrey, which are so hard to convey into words. I find the sadness becoming heavier again as the anniversary approaches. I try to focus on what my faith says is true about where Audrey is now and about how God loves and holds her, but the sadness and trauma of the events replay often. The natural rhythms of events that recur annually feel like counting down this year, reliving and replaying our ‘last’ of whichever special time it was with Audrey, leading up to August 7 th -10 th , and what...
Read more