7 months.

7/17/2022

I woke up with a heavy heart knowing that today is the 17th. The worst date of the month.

"Being a parent is more than just keeping your kids alive"...”I know a lot of you parent’s can’t wait for the day your kids move out”…”It’s your job to protect your kids from harm but you can’t keep them locked in a room until their 18th birthday and open the door and say here’s some sunshine, now get out!”

I knew this message wasn't for us when that was in the opening of the sermon. Prior to this tragedy, I don’t ever remember hearing a sermon that was actually painful to hear. This tragedy affected literally every single aspect of our lives. There is nothing untouched. Mom and Dad ended up leaving 20 minutes into the sermon. He talked about parents anxious for men their won't live at home anymore. About how parenting is more than keeping your lads safe from harm. There were so many things about this message that had me fighting back tears.

Being a parent is protecting your child but what if you couldn’t?

Chris and Kam didn't even make it to the age of moving out.

Chris and Kam didn’t even make it to an 18th birthday.

My parents didn't even get to the point where all of their kids left the house in the normal way.

I anxiously slipped out the back as service was closing so that no one would question or comment on my teary eyes. Now, I am not faulting the pastor on his sermon at all. Preaching about raising children is very important. There are just so many new triggers that never existed before. This really just set the tone for how that day was going to go. When I got home, I texted Mom saying that today is a “be gentle on yourself day.” I went lay on the couch and when Bregman was ready for a nap, I napped too. I woke up and Mom and I went to Ross to get our minds off of the day. It is very depressing that no matter what we do, there’s no escaping this reality and I don’t see how we won’t ever feel this way. My mom has a lot of faith in God and that’s great, but I’m honestly struggling with that right now. I know in my heart that one day I will understand why this had to happen, but right now I just don’t. It’s not fair and I wish He would have given me the choice to take their places. They deserved to live longer than 15, 17 and 20. I still cannot believe that they only lived to be 15, 17 and 20. It’s just not fair and they didn’t deserve to lose their lives this way.

We have so many wonderful people that constantly support and check up on us. I’m so thankful for that. Walking through this without the love and support would be much darker. But I mourn my old life so deeply. I liked being boring. I liked being nobody. I liked Kamryn popping up with Mom at any given moment. I liked Lindy coming to see Bregman. I liked Christopher being so excited when I went visit with Bregman. I don’t like life without them. I miss seeing my happy mom. I miss not wondering if my daughter is dealing with this grief ok. I miss not feeling like I’m neglecting my marriage with things to occupy my mind to avoid the grief at times. I mourn the life where I woke up without heavy clouds of grief immediately swarming in. I don’t remember that life, but I miss it so deeply. I truly don’t know how anyone would be able to recover from this. To say that the drunk driver took everything from us and ruined our lives is quite the understatement.

The tone for this entry is quite different from Mom’s. I don’t have a verse and I don’t have a very encouraging outlook today. The 17th has a way of knocking us down without hesitation and the recovery time is always unknown.

**Edited to add: I just want to re-iterate that nothing was wrong or offensive about the Pastor’s sermon. I just shared this to show how much this tragedy truly affected every single aspect of our lives. There will be many sermons that will be hard to here post-death of our three little kids that meant so much to us. Mother’s day sermon was very hard. We opted out on Father’s day because we knew that would be hard. This was just an unexpected hard. Everything about life after loss is just hard.