Losing Hazel, finding hope

 When you lose a child too soon, and it is always too soon, you feel desperate to cling onto everything you still have, physical and intangible, that connects you to them. I will never forget Hazel. Of course I know that, but I'm desperate not to forget anything. That goes for other people, too. I want them to know the little pieces of her we have, and let their hearts be shaped by love and grief that our precious daughter died beneath my hands even as she was being knit together in a place we couldn't see.

I'm writing because it feels like surviving, it feels like clinging to hope, like holding onto a life preserver. I want to process my journey through these dark valleys, bright mountaintops, and everything in between. All of these memories and lessons, the depths of pain and the peaks of God's sweet presence and comforts, connect me to Hazel. They are because of Hazel, so I don't want to lose a single one. I've lost my daughter. I've lost a life with her. I've lost carrying her and holding her close and smelling her scent and nursing her and feeding her and smiling at her and rocking her and a million other dreams, hopes, shattered. But I haven't lost the hope of knowing her and loving her, forever. One day. In the meantime, I have these memories: of my days carrying her, of losing her, of burying her. And everything God did in me, in us, through this journey of loving and losing, but also of gaining. 

I have so much to say. So much to savor.