Holiday Memories Do-Over

I’m reposting these videos as links from YouTube—apparently my newfound love of Google Video is misplaced, since many of you reported that you couldn’t watch them.  And if you’ve already seen them, you can look at them again if you’d like.  I can’t get enough of them myself.   

Christmas with Hudson: 2008 and 2009

Hudson’s First (Sort of) Steps

You Can Run, But You Can't Hide

Well, our trip to Paris has served its primary purpose: taking some of the sting out of what I knew would be terrible pain during this Christmas holiday. We arrived in Paris on Christmas morning, but we’d never have known it given all the hustle and bustle of this major European metropolis that does not really even stop for Christmas.

But as so many of you seemed to anticipate with your comments and well-wishes (“I hope Paris will make Christmas a little less painful...”), this trip has been little more than that—a brief, and inadequate, distraction. I cannot shake the sense that we should not be here, that we should be at home in North Carolina, still enjoying the remnants of a white Christmas with our snow-loving child (seriously, hearing about the snow on Christmas Day felt like the biggest middle finger the universe could have flipped us right now). As I told Jessica in an email earlier this week, this all just feels like a grand charade. Just as the city itself puts on a big show of lights and sparkly things at Christmas to try to liven up the dreary gray of urban winter, so too, am I putting on a show of going on a “vacation” that is no more than a predictably futile attempt at escape.

And good grief, there are children everywhere. Not that I expected this vacation to be child-free, but I just wasn’t thinking too hard about the fact that I was coming to a city where 2 million people are also raising kids, not to mention all the tourists who have come here to celebrate their holidays with their little ones. And while we would never have brought Hudson on this kind of trip at her young age, I am still filled with longing as I see parents toting their exhausted little toddlers in their arms or holding sleeping children in their laps while the rest of the family tours an exhibit. I have never wanted to have tired, aching arms from carrying a child so much in my entire life. My arms ache for the lack of ache. And seeing children of so many ages touring the city with their parents hurts, too—watching the different ways they interact at age 4, age 10, age 13 only reminds me over and over that we will never know Hudson at these ages, will never get to show her the wonders of Paris or any other such place. She is everywhere we look and yet she is not here.  We’re not Catholic, or even religious, but we lit a candle for Hudson inside Notre Dame and cried—it was all we could do.

This is not to say that I have not enjoyed anything—I have. The city is old and beautiful and enchanting—it just doesn’t have the kind of spells I need. Nothing looks like it should. Nothing feels like it should. Everything has a dull finish to it. I wrote before that I am fundamentally altered—being in another city across the ocean doesn’t change that. The old me would have wanted to document this trip in words and tons of photos. Now it’s the best I can do to hold feebly still while Ed takes pictures (an art in which he still finds meaning and joy), dreading the expression I know I will see on my face when I look at the resulting image. I am not myself. And I hate looking at these pictures of myself, because I can see and feel the pain and effort behind the expression. It is effort that I have never before had to muster for a photo in my entire life. And it hurts to look at that.

I feel ridiculous and terribly ungrateful to have this opportunity that many may never have in their lives and yet be so morose, but as I have learned during this course of this terrible journey, the grief will be what it will be. And all I can do is let it.

Merry Christmas, Sweet Angel

Remembering our girl and sending warmest wishes to all of you. 

30 Days of Thanks—Day #30

I am grateful to be leaving for Paris this afternoon, to have the means to do so, and to have a family who understands my choice, even if it makes them sad. When we first made the decision to go, I was torn about it. Our departure day is here, and while I feel some regret that I will not be with my family opening presents tomorrow, I know that we absolutely made the right decision. Although this trip doesn’t magically turn Christmas into “just another day,” I’ve at least been able to avoid spending this entire week filled with dread and sorrow in anticipation of a Christmas celebration without Hudson. Tomorrow will still be sad—how could it not be? But it will be sad in a different way, I hope, than just biting my lip and staring into the giant hole where Hudson should be with her cousins on Christmas morning. I hope.
And that’s my 30 Days of Thanks.

It’s hard to know how to wrap up this 30-day exercise. Like so much of the time since Hudson died, these past 30 days seem to have both crawled and flown by (but honestly, they have mostly crawled). I began my 30 Days of Thanks in search of healing during what I knew would be an incredibly difficult time. This time has been even more difficult than I thought it would be (despite the time and energy I spent trying to “prepare” myself), but deliberately engaging in exercises in gratitude has been tremendously helpful. It has not been easy to find something to be grateful for every day, for which I feel a little bit ashamed. Having lost my child, there are many days where it is so much easier to focus on all that is missing from our lives—indeed, there are many days where it is difficult to see much else. Which is exactly why I gave myself this assignment. Because I know that even though our loss is immeasurable, irreparable, and still unimaginable, I also know that we remain so incredibly fortunate in so many ways. Primary among them is that we got to have Hudson in our lives at all—even though we were allowed far too short a time with her, I would not trade a single second of that time to be rid of this pain. It is the deep and abiding joy we experienced with Hudson and the deep and abiding love that we felt for her that make this grief so very excruciating. But there’s still my joy. There’s still my joy.

I can’t wrap up this exercise, done during the time for giving thanks and celebrating family, friends, and love, without saying again how grateful we are for all the love, support, and friendship that we have received from so many people all over the world, known and unknown to us. You have sustained us in every way, picked us up over and over when we have fallen in our grief, and most importantly, helped us keep our precious girl’s memory, spirit, and light alive in the world that she loved so much. For every person who has ever read an entry here, who has ever left a comment or sent us a message or gift of any kind, who has ever thought of us or of Hudson even in a passing moment, who has kept Hudson alive in their hearts or in other ways, for each and every one of you, I am grateful. I think I said long ago that I needed a new word for “grateful,” but I hope that it adequately conveys how I feel. Because of you, I am alive. Because of you, I have survived what seemed unsurvivable. Because of you, Hudson’s sweet spirit will live on forever.

Thank you.  And Happy Holidays. 

First (Sort Of) Steps

Hudson took her actual first steps on Thanksgiving Day 2009, a few days before her first birthday. And then for the next four weeks, she showed no further interest in walking whatsoever. Maybe she just decided she wanted to spend a little more time in Mom and Dad’s arms before taking off. But on Christmas Eve, again at her grandma and grandpa’s house, she took some more steps, and this time she meant business. We weren’t ready with the camera right at that moment, but this video was taken the day after Christmas at Poppy’s  (her other grandfather) house.

She was ready to go, as you can see. So proud of herself and excited to explore her new skill.

I miss her so much—all the milestones we’ll never see feel so very heavy right now.

30 Days of Thanks—Day #29

After I posted yesterday’s slide show, I realized how lucky we are to have thousands of images of our girl, starting from the day she was born. Our camera has a continuous shot function that basically allows us to take the equivalent of a video in still shots, which means that we were able to capture all of Hudson’s many, many expressions in photos, and as you can tell from the relatively few I have posted on this blog, our child had an incredibly expressive face. Each month, as I culled through the hundreds of shots we took at different times (often that continuous shot function would result in 50 photos from a 30-second timeframe), I had terrible difficulty deciding which ones to pull out to post on Facebook, because to me, they were all different and they were all precious. Even then, I often posted 5 or 10 photos of the same pose because I just could not choose. Now, of course, they are more precious than they should ever be. But I am so grateful that in addition to all my favorite images—the ones I’ve posted here, the ones we have framed all over the house, the ones I keep as the wallpaper on my computer, the ones I use whenever I change my profile picture on Facebook—in addition to all those, I can sit and look through thousands of photos of my girl making thousands of different expressions.

Her beautiful face is indelibly seared into my brain—I can call it to mind any time (in fact, it rarely leaves my mind), but I am so lucky to be able to gaze upon it in all its many glorious forms with the simple touch of a button.

30 Days of Thanks—Day #28

I’m grateful for those things that come along right when I need them.

Earlier today, I was thinking about what I was going to write about tonight, not the daily gratitude post, but a separate post I was going to call “Those Happy Days.” The other day, I sent a Facebook message to an old friend. The last message I’d sent him was a year ago, December 4, 2009. We were catching up for the first time after many years, and I wrote, “How are you? I am about as good as I could possibly imagine,” and then proceeded to tell him all about Ed and Hudson.

I was so struck by this when I read it again. How much can change in a year. And what I’ve been thinking about since I read it is the fact that I won’t ever be able to say that again, because for the rest of my life, there will always be someone missing. There will always be a way that I could imagine my life being better, if it only had my oldest child in it again. I was feeling so sad about this today, because it is still a reality I have difficulty facing. It makes me so angry to not even be 35 years old and to be able to say with absolute certainty that my happiest times are already behind me. I know there is so much joy still to come, more joy than I can imagine right now, but I also know that that joy will always be tempered somewhat. Because it will live side-by-side with this terrible pain for the rest of my life. It is an awful truth.

As I was getting ready to write about this tonight, I got an email from Jessica’s cousin Deedee (over the course of our friendship, I have grown pretty close to many of Jessica’s cousins—Jessica’s other cousin Caroline, along with Deedee and Deedee’s mother and sister, basically planned and executed Hudson’s entire memorial service in North Carolina, a task for which no one in my family was equipped, and one for which we will always be deeply grateful). In it, she told me about a song on the new Indigo Girls holiday album. “There’s Still My Joy” was written by Melissa Manchester, but this cover is extremely powerful. Although the “tiny child” Manchester wrote about was most certainly Jesus, this song has an entirely different meaning for me.  You will see why when you listen and read the lyrics.

So I’m grateful to Deedee (maybe Jessica’s ESP extends to her entire family when it comes to things I might need) for this much-needed reminder that although the happiest times in my life may in fact be behind me, there’s still my joy: the joy of my memories with our amazing oldest daughter Hudson and the joy our future children will bring us.

There’s Still My Joy

I took my tree down to the shore
The garland, and the silver star
To find my peace, and grieve no more
To heal this place inside my heart

On every branch I laid some bread
And hungry birds filled up the sky
They rang like bells around my head
They sang my spirit back to life

One tiny child can change the world
One shining light can show the way
For all my tears, for what I've lost
There’s still my joy
There’s still my joy
For Christmas day

The snow comes down on empty sand
There’s tinsel moonlight on the waves
My soul was lost, but here I am
So this must be amazing grace
One tiny child can change the world
One shining light can show the way

Beyond my tears for what I've lost
There’s still my joy
There’s still my joy
For Christmas day
There’s still my joy for Christmas day
There’s still my joy. 


Hudson’s many faces in her Christmas dress for the one-year turtle pics


There’s still my joy.