missing

As the blog is named...we are missing Mark...and there isn't any better way to say it.  Life isn't the same in this house and all of us have been forever changed.  
But, even more than that, WE are missing.  A part of us...gone.  It's different for me than it is for my husband and our girls each suffer the loss in their own way.

I miss the part of me that died when he died.  The innocent...the joyful.  The part of me that couldn't wait to take pictures of the kids and hang them on the wall...the part of me that was always hoping someone would ask me how many children I had...the part of me that woke up every morning feeling overwhelmed with blessings. 

Now...without it...without all of me...I have a hard time wanting to pick up the camera.  There will never be any more pictures of Mark and never a picture with all of my children together.  Scrapbooks sit on my shelves unfinished and I have no desire to finish.  Old pictures remind me of what we used to be, and new ones scream loudly the gaping hole where Mark should be. 

Now, I dread the, "How many children do you have?", question.  The question itself is not difficult.  I have 5 children.  But, it is the following questions and conversation that always end up giving the "asker" more information than they really wanted to know.  It then leads to the "how?"...you know...where I have to then explain how my son drowned.  Yes...that.  As much as I believe in my heart that such a terrible accident can happen to anyone and as much as I know what responsible and competent parents we are...the guilt will always be there.  And I will always feel the judgement of others, whether real or perceived, when I have to tell them what happened. 

And now, with that part of me gone...I wake up every morning and know that if I think too long about how much it hurts to have lost Mark...it will be difficult to make it through the day.  Suppression works much better.  I'm doubtful that there will be a point in time that we will accept what happened.  How do you accept something like that?  How do you ever get to a place where you can be okay with that?  I know it happened and that he is really gone, but to one day not feel the overwhelming pain of it all? 

We miss him.  We miss US.  Fortunately, we love each other and find ourselves in the trenches of this grief war together.  I hate it that my girls have to go through this, perhaps it is the Lord's will to mold them into incredible women through this very trial.  That is the most that I can hope for...that beauty will come from these ashes.