It's been a week that is hard to sum up in a few tidy paragraphs with pictures scattered throughout. That's obviously what I'll do here, but I will say up front that it won't do justice to the complexity of the week and that, while I want to share some here as our "family scrapbook" would be incomplete without it, I would write differently in a private journal.
I wrote in my recent "Children" post about a family close to us who were experiencing the nightmare of their little boy going from being perfectly healthy to on a ventilator in the PICU within hours. While visiting them there, we got a chuckle out of figuring out my relation to them. I'm the little boy's father's wife's brother's wife's brother's wife. Yes, it's a mouthful, but in short the connections feel close and those that love him dearly are people we love dearly. He died on Friday, and I can hardly type the words because it has yet to feel real. That may be in part to the distance I have (we didn't see him more often than once every few weeks and so my daily life is not changed so dramatically by this loss) or the fact that it just feels impossible, scary, unfair and in so many ways unimaginable (yet in other ways very close to home).
In some ways the week felt like many others - caring for children (but treasuring those moments a bit more than I often do), harvesting food (often with his family in mind and when picking things, like berries, for them it was my best way of praying), and gathering with friends on various occasions. It felt so appropriate to gather on Independence Day with friends who journeyed so very close to us during our time with Nora. We enjoyed a walk to the blueberry patch and gathered the blue component of our red, white and blue dessert.
The week's bright spot, brought on by tragedy sadly, was getting a few hours with Ivy in our home. The girls were thrilled to have their first playdate with her (minus either of her parents so it felt different to them I think!). I really was hardly needed (other than to supervise that Terah's enthusiasm didn't go overboard). They were all eager to bring her various forms of entertainment or to walk her around the house or to feed her a sweet potato snack. Somehow it felt so very good to have her there, made me feel closer to what was happening in a good, connected, and sad kind of way.
The following day we made the trek to UVA as a family, it being the first time Jason and I were in the PICU since we were there by Nora's side (and with Kali being several feet taller and two additional girls in the back seat). Even so, some memories did come back - of the drive to the hospital, the parking garage, the feeling of looking around at all the people and wondering what was happening in their lives to bring them there, the beeping machines, the loved ones waiting and hoping and fearing and grieving. And then there were so many things that felt so different. By the time Nora was in the PICU, we had had nearly 9 or so months of grieving and of letting go of expectations and dreams. Her decline at the end was fast and yet we also had in some ways prepared for the unexpected more than one can when the unexpected comes so fast and furious. I feel like we experienced grief but not trauma or shock in her death. That feels like a really big difference.
Whether it was wise or not I decided to proceed with debuting my little 2 hour dairy products workshop on Saturday that I had (quickly and without much thought to its marketing potential) titled "How to make yogurt, butter, ricotta and cottage cheese with a baby on your hip." It was just going to be for a few work colleagues and some neighbor friends, all women who I felt would be the right people to be with at a time like this. They were, and it was such a fun time. We'll see if and when I do it again, but for a first go at it and on a week where my mind and heart were elsewhere much of the time, I think it went well and that maybe I inspired some new yogurt, butter and cheese-makers!It wasn't long after we concluded the workshop (which ended with some pretty delicious taste testing of various combinations of our freshly made products with fruits, bread, crackers, maple syrup, pesto, chocolate, AND apple butter on cottage cheese) that Terah sacked out for a nap. It was a big morning being the baby on the hip (she was actually more under foot than on my hip but had the same impact!).
When she woke, we headed to the tree planting for B. As we arrived at Emily and Jonas' there were people streaming up the hill. We knew maybe 20% of the crowd gathered - many had never met Blake but loved someone that loved him. We carried the little red maple Jason had dug from the edge of our woods up the hill and before long it was tucked into the earth by his parents, watered by his grandparents, and a little truck placed at its base as a reminder of one of his many loves. Stories, memories and grief were shared in the circle, hugs were given out in abundance, and it was acknowledged that while no one wanted to be gathered together for this reason it was good to be together, trying as best we could to at least share the load in some small but hopefully significant way. Still so very hard to believe. One of my hopes is that in the coming weeks and months and years, we can continue to be a supportive presence as this is just the beginning of the journey. I also hope that beauty and joy will return in abundance and in a deeper fully way for all those that loved him...in time anyway!
Time to wake the family and head to the blueberry patch. I'll just end with two pictures that didn't fit anywhere else but wanted to be included. We'll trial our first batch of fermented dill pickles today and the plants are flowering like crazy, so hoping to be canning pickles within the week. For the first year ever we have grown enough dill on time to be using our own dill seed heads. Yay!
And finally, Terah and Alida are just too cute together these days!
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