Today marks the 7-year Sadiversary, Part 1, of the day my beloved Christopher was lost in the Mississippi River. I want to work and have today be like any other day, but it’s not. It means there have been seven birthdays, seven Christmases, seven Easters, so many years without the beautiful smile of my beloved son or without hearing his voice. Today is a day of bits and pieces. And today is one more day that I try to put together these bits and pieces of the devastation of this loss into something beautiful.
Time still also comes to me in bits & pieces. I still lose hours here or there or months pass and I’ve meant to complete something or do something or say something and I haven’t quite gotten there yet.
This post was meant to have been written at the turn of 2023, and here it is 2024 and I am finally writing again.
Each Christmas from 2017-2022 my family members received gifts from me that were not only from me, but from my sense of longing for and remembering my beloved Christopher. Finally, in 2022, I was able to give someone else a job that was to make bits and pieces out of Chris’s books and papers, his own handwriting and words and pictures important for him, that had been in boxes and crates and make them into something beautiful.
Each image was created by Emily with themes that I shared about each family member. They contain fragments of books and papers and a few photos. They also contain fragments from the lovely cards so many of you sent or gave us after Chris died, so you are there with us.
It’s hard to put together a beautiful life when someone we love so much walks on ahead of us. I still carry the grief so close to my heart. I don’t want to sound cliche, but this artwork does illustrate for me how we take what has torn us apart and make something new, something beautiful, something that honors and remembers and puts it back together in a new and surprising way with the help of those around us.
I sit here today in the easy chair with my kitty on my lap and my foot in a boot after another surgery–my body has also broken down a lot in these seven years and is getting cobbled back together–with tears in my eyes and gratitude in my heart. I am truly grateful for the life of my beautiful boy. I am grateful that he is in the arms of Jesus, there to welcome so many of my friends and family that have joined him in the cloud of witnesses over these past years. I am grateful for artists and for musicians and for those who have walked with me all of these years now. I am grateful to you.
The spirit of the Lord God is upon me
    because the Lord has anointed me;
he has sent me to …
    to comfort all who mourn,
to provide for those who mourn in Zion—
    to give them a garland instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
    the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit. Isaiah 61:1a, 3a
Chris’s little brother Austin, who is 27 and older for years now than Chris ever got to be…Austin is doing really well. I don’t share too much about his life because it is for him to share. But Austin is teaching languages with Tapestry. He sings with us sometimes. He continues to play piano and he has become something of a social butterfly. He’s in school at Metro State to become a math teacher. Today he will use Chris’s guitar to begin lessons with friend and Tapestry musician David Martin. I am so immensely proud of him. I especially love this collage that Emily made for Austin. Look carefully and you can see how much care she put into including Chris’s thoughts and memorials for Chris in this amazing keyboard:
I always write these entries for me. I write them for those who mourn, too. I know it’s hard finding our way to beauty out of the bits and pieces of our lives, but with the help of God and with people around us, there is beauty in life again. I have found it. Not always, but more and more often. It looks different now, but it’s there.
Finally, I share a couple of pictures of the artwork that Emily made for our home and how we have displayed this creation. Look closely and see how the artist surprises. That’s how God surprises us, too. Look closely.
Peace.
diariesofamissiondeveloper 