Sharing one part of the upcoming “accidental” book where I tell the full story of what happened to our first child, and how God helped us through the season of what could have been a stressful pregnancy, of mourning, how things got better today, and how we can hope with certainty that tomorrow will be even brighter. 🙂
The first day I reported back to work, which was less than three months from Brei’s death, I wrote this in my journal:
“Back to work. Life really does go on without a trace of someone’s passing. Passing. Like this world is a road and we’re all just passing through. Maybe not forgotten, not yet, but perhaps slowly fading.”
And I fight that fading because I always want to remember Brei. There aren’t even a handful of memories, but I try to hold on to what I can so that I don’t forget her, and what God has done in me through her short life. I don’t want her life and what we’ve went through to be in vain by going back to the person I was before February 28, 2015. Holding on to the memory is different from letting go. We can move forward even while holding on to the memory, but we can’t if we don’t let go. So many times I’ve told Pao that I wanted to name our next baby girl, Berea Dannielle. He told me that we should be careful if we do that because the next baby isn’t Brei. In my mind, it’s okay to treat the next baby as Brei because we didn’t really know Brei and it’s completely the same as having a new baby. I told him that maybe I just felt attached to this unique name. Like our aqua-colored Christmas tree, I felt like the name Berea Dannielle is truly ours. Almost a year has passed and I realize now that back then, that’s what I wanted simply because I haven’t let go.
Pao and I will have other children. We may give them the same name or not, but we won’t look for Brei in them. When our future kids are old enough and when it’s appropriate, we will tell them about Brei, but we won’t talk about Brei every day. Brei will not be replaced, but our future kids will not live in Brei’s shadows.
Tragic moments in our lives like the death of someone we really love will definitely affect us—what we do, what we say, how we think, how we look at and treat others, and ultimately our character. We may not realize that what we are doing, saying, or thinking is because of what happened, but the true state of our hearts eventually comes out of our mouths. We can hold on to the beautiful memories of the people we’ve lost just like other beautiful memories, but we need to let go of the people we’ve lost. We can’t look for them in others, because we won’t find them there. We look to God, because whatever we’ve lost, He can fill, not with another person, but with Himself. It does get better because through what we’ve lost, we learn to trust God beyond how we’ve already had, and we know Him more beyond how we’ve already known Him. We are then able to see life differently, to look beyond the past, and to be certain that today will be better. 🙂
