Losing a Child
The last couple of weeks has been very rough. My firstborn daughter went home to Heaven on November 18, 2022. I have been thinking a lot about how short life is and how we never know when our time is up. We think we will outlive our children and try to prepare them for a future without us. But no one prepares us for a future without them.
Even though she was an adult of 55 years, she was my firstborn. I was 19 and not ready to be a mother. We went through the first baby years together. The sleepless nights when she wouldn’t eat, walking the floor trying to figure motherhood out. Not wanting to call mom and admit defeat, but having to in the end. Discovering; that if I had called earlier I could have saved myself a lot of anguish. After we got the eating thing figured out she was a very happy child.
She was a great traveling companion; when her father was stationed in Germany and we moved there to be with him. We had a lot of firsts together; first plane ride, getting a passport together, first time in a foreign country, Then finding out later that he would be gone most of the time guarding the border between east and west. This was in the days before the Berlin wall was taken down. I worked for the Army and my job was in Munich and his on the border near Berlin. We saw each other a couple of times a month when he came in for supplies. Jennifer and I occupied our time visiting museums, parks, the zoo, and just walking around the city. When she first started to talk any man in a green army uniform was dada. Her little sister was born in Germany and then a brother in Ft. Knox, KY. Her father was then stationed in Korea but we didn’t go with him this time. When he rotated back to the states we were sent to Ft. Leonard Wood, MO. Life had gone full circle as this is where she was born.
It seems that life is a series of circles; large, small, happy, sad, life, and death. It is how we deal with them that determines the outcome. By the time the girls were in high school we were in Milan, IL. They both graduated from Rock Island high school. (Go Rocks) The rock group Queen was big at that time and the song “We Will Rock you” was played at every sporting event. This is where Jenny met her future husband and they had two wonderful children of their own, a girl and a boy.
When children leave home they start their own life circles and even though they are still your flesh and blood they move on. I always encouraged my kids to write down memories so they have them when they get old. Pictures are great but they don’t always tell you who is in them or what the reason for the picture was.
I am glad I was able to tell her children and grandchildren some of the background reasons for the pictures she had and to fill in some of the blanks about her childhood. Even though she is gone, she will always be in my heart along with her brothers and her husband who have gone before her.
Now that my circle gets smaller I lean on the one who is closer than a brother and who will never leave me or forsake me. He is the one who comforts me and helps me get through each day.
REST IN PEACE, JENNY. I WILL SEE YOU ON THE OTHER SIDE.
I LOVE YOU,
MOM.
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