I am up at 4:45am this morning on the first day of the new year.
It’s not unusual that I am up this early, or even earlier. For me, sleep has been elusive since September 2022 when my sweet Ilona died.
In years past, waking up to a new year brought so many hopes and dreams. Waking to a new year felt like all things were new and possibilities were endless.
This morning, as I write from the Outer Banks of North Carolina, this new year ahead is filled with fear and sorrow and Hope and despair and even faith. It’s a cacophony of emotions that are hard to untangle.
With each turn of a calendar year, it feels like I am leaving my daughter behind. I feel like I am getting further and further away from her.
But part of my fear entering this new year is that others will grow weary of my weariness. That friends and family will want and expect me to move on. I have already heard some rumblings of this.
But here is what I want you to understand: There is no moving on. This is a part of me. Forever. This shapes my identity.
When I married Leonard, I became a wife.
When I had Rae, I became a mother.
When I buried Ilona, I became…this.
There is no word for it. Unlike widow, widower, or orphan, there is no widely used word for a parent who buries a child.
But I don’t need a word. It is me.
So what do I do as I face this new year? What lies ahead for me in 2025?
Leonard, who is the pastor at our church, recently completed a sermon series on the book of Daniel. The last 3 chapters are all a dream and vision given to Daniel by an angel and it’s all very complex and frankly, a bit confusing.
But in the end of the book, an angel is speaking to Daniel about the future and things that will come to pass.
This is Daniel’s response to the angel and how the book ends:
I heard, but I did not understand.
Then I said, “O my lord, what shall be the outcome of these things?”
He said, “Go your way, Daniel, for the words are shut up and sealed until the time of the end…But go your way till the end. And you shall rest and shall stand in your allotted place at the end of the days.” ~Daniel 12:8-13
I do not understand – I absolutely do not understand. I do not know why Ilona died. I do not know how I will bear this dark sorrow and deep pain the rest of my life. Like Daniel, there is so much I do not understand.
But, like Daniel, I will go my way. I will go my way and live my life, till the end.
This sounds like a simple concept–like what we all do everyday and what we’re supposed to do. But having experienced the deep trauma of the sudden loss of my sweet Ilona, I often wonder how I can make it through another day. I have said out loud that I don’t think I can make it.
But I have.
And I do.
So I will continue to go my way, as a wife, mother, and bereaved mother, until I get to finally rest and stand in my allotted place at the end of the days.
With my God.
With my husband.
With my children.
With Ilona.
The sunrise this morning over the Atlantic Ocean was spectacular. The rays of the sun were reaching up into the night sky and slowly overcoming the darkness.
It was as if God was reaching out to me in my darkness letting me know that He sees and it will one day be completely overtaken by His love and His light.
So even as I can barely face 2025, I must go about my days while bearing the weight of this grief.
You will see me living out my days. But don’t be fooled into thinking that I have moved on.
I am just moving ahead.
Carrying the grief and sorrow.
As I do I yearn for the day when He will wipe away every tear from my eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore…
Until then, I live.
January 1, 2025 | 6:35am | Corolla, NC