Leah Stirewalt

Our engagement photo!

So many times, I’m driving down the interstate only to realize I have no idea how far I am in my travels. Thankfully, if I wait a few seconds, the old faithful mile marker will pop up to tell me exactly what I need to know.

The same is true in grief. Yesterday, I received that mile marker, or in my case, a month marker. It was five months yesterday that Joel went Home to Heaven. Five months. On-the-one-hand, the number of days I’ve had to survive without him have felt much longer than the 150 days he’s actually been gone. My heart aches for him daily, and the days feel soooo long sometimes. At other times, however, it feels as if he just left us yesterday, making the pain so much more near.

Speaking of pain, I’ve been asked quite often over the last few weeks how the kids and I are doing. In short…we’re surviving. I don’t think I can use the word thriving just yet. The older kids miss their dad so much. There are so many areas he would normally be very active in within their lives right now, and his absence in those areas makes his physical absence from this earth that much more noticeable.

As for the littles…each one is responding so uniquely different. Josiah (our 9-year-old) misses his daddy but makes sure to point out anything that reminds him of daddy or the things daddy used to do with him. He grieves quietly, and I’m afraid he’s internalizing many of his emotions. We have counseling planned for his near future to help with drawing some of that out in a non-confrontational way. Katerina (our special needs 7-year-old) is blessed to be a special needs little girl right now, because she doesn’t feel the depth of pain the rest of us feel. Now, she’s never too quick to tell us when she misses daddy, but it’s more fact-based than feeling-based. She also reminds everyone of the rules that were in place when daddy died. Such as…when eating at Taco Bell, one MUST eat all their food before touching their cinnamon twists, “Because daddy said so!” I just had to chuckle the other night when she very loudly made that announcement.

And…then…there’s…Austyn. My precious 3-year-old. There’s no double about it…of all the littles…he’s hurting the most. His pain is HUGE, and he’s struggling to make sense of it in his little mind. He cries for daddy daily. He has tantrums daily, because he doesn’t know how to handle his emotions right now. But, he also asks such wise-for-his-years questions, making me wonder if his intelligence is making him think very deeply about everything, causing fear and worry to keep popping up. Many therapy plans are in the works for him too. As you can imagine…I have my hands full simply trying to help them deal with their own grief journey, making mine a bit more complex.

I feel I haven’t been able to even come close to grieving Joel the way my body needs to. Sometimes, I feel as if I’m about to blow, because I just want to cry an ocean and yet have to reign it in to be able to still function as a parent for my children. Sure…I cry around them, but not as often as my body wants to or probably needs to, because I’m just trying to provide a sense of peace in our home. We’ve had so much upheaval, change, and dysfunction (if truth be known) that we now need a huge outpouring of peace. The more I can help to usher that in, the better.

The real me misses my beloved deeply. My heart literally hurts so much sometimes…a physical aching, where I often wonder if I’m having a heart attack. (No…I’m not having heart problems…just heartbreak problems.) I can’t go anywhere without seeing something that reminds me of Joel, and we have a ton of other “mile markers” in our near future that I’m already dreading. Our wedding anniversary is next month. My heart is already breaking over how I’m going to handle that one. I had some dear friends make that 1st very special for me after Chris died, so I know I need to do something different to take my mind off of it, otherwise I’m afraid it will be a pity party day full of grieving that loss all over again. I have lumps in my throat just thinking about it. September brings Joel’s birthday, then the busy season of fall – Thanksgiving – Christmas – my birthday and back to February, the one year anniversary of his Homegoing. Mile markers every single month until then. But, who am I kidding…those are just the “big ones”. I see the little ones daily.

I often go back and read my posts from my first widow experience to see where I was on that journey compared to this one. It appears I was a little more “alive” on my 5th month back then, but it remained a roller coaster ride for quite awhile. I have to remind myself of the very words I speak to other widows and widowers. No grief experiences are the same. They can be identical in scope (suicide, cancer, auto accident), but the people are different, so the experiences will always be different. The same is true of me and my own two experiences. The men were different, I was different (younger then, older now), and our situations were different (4 newly adopted children to parent solo this time). Different towns. Different family members. Everything is different. Well…except for One.

The same God who reached for me out of the deep waters, rescued me, and ultimately restored me, is the VERY same God who will do it again. Until then, I cling to Him as my life raft, and I know the rescue will be complete one day. Until then, I long for His return. I long to be with Joel for eternity, and I long to be in my forever Home!

#HeIsStillGood