Life, Love and Loss

I have no idea where I'm going with this post...I just feel the need ...

I remember waking up the morning after the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting and the punch to the gut I felt when I came to enough to remember it wasn't a bad dream. I remember the rawness within my heart for months afterward. 

This weekend, that feeling returned. This time a little closer to home. Matt has family in Texas. As they say, "They're good people." Really damn good people who would do anything for their family. After Matt's sister died in January 2008, they drove all night just to come here to hug us, to cook for us, to cry with us, to listen to us...just to be with us. That's family...it's what family does in a time of crisis. 

This time, it's their family that suffered that an incredibly heart breaking loss. Kimmy had just celebrated her 18th birthday two weeks ago. She was heading to Texas State this fall. She had a lifetime ahead of her. 

Sadly, this weekend I've followed the heartbreak of a small town as they struggle to understand how this could have happened to their Kimmy. 

What I can tell you from being married to a man who lost his sister all too soon and recently losing my Dad...

You never get over it. You will carry that pain in a special place with you, always. One day you'll realize the pain no longer stings like it did in the beginning. And you'll feel like the worst person ever because it no longer hurts as much as it did in those first few months and years. Or maybe you just become numb to the pain and it doesn't seem as consuming. 

The first time you laugh, you'll hate yourself. When minutes and hours start to go by and you realize you haven't thought about her, the guilt will consume you. 

Don't stop talking about her. 

Don't hide from the pain. Don't numb the pain. Let yourself experience the pain and the heartbreak, because there is beauty in it. The beauty is Kimmy's life and the legacy she's left behind. 

18 years will never be enough, and a lifetime without her seems unbearable. Take it one day at a time, an hour at a time. Grief is not a race. It's not something you finish and move on to the next thing. It's going to change you; I encourage you to focus that grief in a way that would make Kimmy proud. 

But she is with you. She's always with you. She'll never leave you.

From our family to yours....God Speed.