peace

Carrying the Weight from Loss is Exhausting 

~ Allyson Williams ~ 4 Comments

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My littlest Theo,

I am here today with you, listening to the water lap up on the shore of the Bay of Quinte. My heart is so heavy, it is tired. I can’t stop wishing from every fibre of my being things were different. Missing you are words that are pale and seem to fall very short of how I feel.

We have lived 224 days without you. Life around me seems normal, the world is still turning, people still have love in their hearts, people still act out of hate, and the everyday routine seems to not have skipped a beat. Anyone looking from the outside would probably think it looks like our life too is back to normal and all is well. You could be our boys living in our home and think the exact same thing. Yet it is all a farce. We are tired, emotionally and physically. Walking around living everyday life carrying the weight of the loss of you is heavy and hard work. Behind every smile, laughter, trip to the grocery store, books read to your brothers, and the other 101 items on a list of simple tasks we all perform each day is your Mom who is doing this all with a 100lbs of grief on her back, and at times a paralyzing force around her that she has no choice but break through and put on a brave face, take on real life and do all that needs to be done.

Your Dad and I are exhausted. After a full day with your brothers, a full day at work for your Dad, then dinner, bath, books and bed we have very little time or energy to feel you. Like to really feel it, to talk about you, to move forward and to unload some of the weight.

We need a break, a break together. Time to focus on each other, to be at home, or not rush home, to cry together, to laugh together, to not cry, to sleep a full night, to fill our tanks without taking care of real life. Today until tomorrow morning we get a break, your brothers are happy as can be spending the night with your Poppa and Markin Williams. So here I sit, with you feeling all I have pushed aside because I had no time or because I was simply too tired to go there at times.

When you passed there was a sense of urgency to help us and we are forever grateful for every act of love but needing help isn’t over. This wasn’t a sprint, and it isn’t a marathon but this is our forever.  We aren’t just normal parents walking like zombies from the grind of having a 2 & 3 year old we are those zombies with an added load that holds a weight that is often too heavy to carry and we need rest. I pray that all of your friends in heaven have parents that are being loved and helped years after they were separated. Those who haven’t suffered a loss of a child will never understand that it isn’t just a emotional exhaustion but a physical one. Having time to refill physically allows time for the heart to also refill with peace. We all have tanks that hold love, peace, and physical energy. These tanks need to be refilled otherwise just like a car you will stall.

Theo, my sweetest little man I am sitting on top of where you were laid to rest, writing to you,and having the closest to a “Mommy Theo day” we will ever have. My heart weeps for you but I am so grateful to have this time with you nonetheless. Your Grandparents just gave us a really great gift.

The sun is shining, the wind is blowing a beautiful gentle breeze and the water sounds calming. Together we share this, as you are all three of those things. I feel you blow through, I feel your love shining down with the warmth of the sun and the sweet sound of the lapping water is as gentle as your love for me and all those who we share space with.

I miss you in immeasurable ways. Today, tomorrow and always. You are my son of all sons, the one I hold in my heart and to never be held in my arms again.

Your forever loving Mommy.

Newly Bereaved Parents

~ Allyson Williams ~ Leave a comment

 


To the parents of a precious baby who left your world too soon.

I am so sorry your baby couldn’t stay. You aren’t alone. I am sure today you are feeling more alone than you have ever felt in your life. I am sure you are thinking what just happened, never happens. It unfortunately does happen and it happens more often than anyone would care to admit. You aren’t alone. You have a whole community of parents whose babies just couldn’t stay and who left behind broken hearts that will never be mended. The most amazing thing about hearts that are broken in this way is that they often hold the desire to help and love other parents through their journeys. When you are ready you will find these parents.

Your journey will be unique to you. As you navigate the coming days try do so with love in your heart and gentleness towards yourself. The day your baby left, a new you was born. This is going to take time to learn who you are now and there is no right or easy way to do this. Give yourself grace, you deserve it.

What I have learned about losing a baby is that they leave such powerful legacies and provide such purpose. There was nothing you did to deserve this; you are the Mother of all Mothers and the Father of all Fathers.

I wish with my whole being you weren’t reading my letter. I can feel the heaviness of your heart and of your arms that are aching to hold your precious baby one more time. This feeling will stay with you forever but with time will feel less painful.

When I think of grief I visualize a great big ocean of water. At the early stages it is all heavy. There are no ripples; it is pure grief. As time passes you will be given waves of peace. The waves come and sometimes they are short and other times you can ride them for a little while. With time these waves come closer together and they stay longer. I remember feeling so guilty when the first wave arrived. I remember thinking “how is it possible to be feeling at peace”. I even questioned if I truly loved my baby since it seemed unfathomable I could be feeling joy, peace, or anything but sadness after my world crashed and my baby left us. But what I have learned is to be gentle with myself. Feeling these things are not only okay but it is what your child would want for you. Welcome the waves, ride them for as long as they will stay, and then when the grief returns be present with it as well.

As you enter back into the world, remember grief holds no timeline; your feelings are yours and uniquely yours; no journey will ever be the same even though there are some common threads; and finally choose love when it is an option. Relationships change after a life event like this. No two people will react the same as they navigate a loss of this magnitude, but if you can find space to offer grace to others and to yourself then you should be able to find your way to loving the new you and to becoming okay once again.

I am so sorry this is a part of your life story. I am sending you love and light as you find your way.

Yours Truly,

Theodore’s Mom

Happy Half Birthday 

~ Allyson Williams ~ Leave a comment

Happy 1/2 Birthday Theodore,

Oh sweet boy of mine. As I type this exactly six months ago you entered the world and laid upon my chest. Your sweetest little heart was still beating and you looked ohh so incredibly perfect to me. Your Dad, myself and all those who were blessed to bare witness have been forever changed and I believe in the most beautiful ways.

You chose the perfect people for your first birthday party six long (or short depending on the moment) months ago. I feel that love the room was filled with and the moment you entered into the outside world that love grew tenfold.

The last six months have been the most life changing months of my life. When you were born so was the new me. I have had to learn to live without you and get to know who the new me really is. I haven’t mastered either but there has been evolution. With every step forward my ability to turn around and see where I came from allows me to see where I am going. It is like coming out of a fog.

This morning I met your beautiful friend Isaac’s Mom at the lake to celebrate you both. You both chose a beautiful morning to be born and you chose a beautiful morning to celebrate your 1/2 birthday. I can see you both looking down on us with hearts full of love, pride and an amount of sadness. With every flower we tossed in the lake to represent each month you have been gone for I could feel you, I couldn’t help but think it is only time and in the grand scheme of things time is nothing and we will be together again one day. When that day arrives I know it will feel like we haven’t skipped a beat.

I hope you two have a wonderful day together as I know I will with Isaac’s Mom.

You both are missed deeply, truly and loved beyond measure.

I love you,

Your forever loving Mommy.

 

Finally Home . . . 1 year ago today. 🐘

~ Allyson Williams ~ 2 Comments

Littlest Theo finally home
Couldn’t have been happier to take my baby home that morning.
Theo my forever baby,

One year ago today you came home. The only home you were ever going to know here with us. You were welcomed in to my womb with love and anticipation of the life we were going to finally live together. Your Dad and I talked about you all the time ever since you were created and then put on hold for about three years. We wondered who you were, were you a girl or a boy, would you survive the thaw, would you start to grow once transferred to my womb, and then how amazing our family would be once you were earth side with us . Never once did we think that after being transfer and developing into the most beautiful baby that would have been the only time we had with you.

Babies die, but not ours. It honestly wasn’t in our realm of possibilities. You get past a certain stage in pregnancy and you have this false sense of security. It never crossed our mind that a baby we created out of desperate love and longing for a family could beat all the odds of conception, grow and then be taken. It seems like a cruel joke. Not many people get to fall in love with their baby years before they are implanted into their body. It wasn’t just a potential baby it was you Theodore Rutherford Williams.

I look at the picture that your Dad took of me moments before you were transferred home. The innocents in my eyes is so beautiful. I was just so in love with you and so excited we were all finally going to be a family and taking you home was one of the best feelings in my life. I felt so at peace that day. I was so ignorant to what this journey was really all about. Your Dad and I prayed together that morning and our prayers were answered we just simply had no idea what they really were going to look like once answered.

Well, what a year we have had! How blessed am I that I had the opportunity to have you with us for your whole lifetime. I carried you every minute of your beautiful life. The life we shared was of pure unconditional love. It was simple and it was easy then. The second leg of this journey is what is so dang hard. Living my life so far away from you, loving you as any mom loves their child and never being able to feel that love back in the traditional ways. It steals my breath, and at times feels impossible to catch.

Sunday I am off to a lodge two hours outside of Winnipeg. For five days I am sharing space, hearts and stories with 25 other Moms who love their babies as fiercely as I love you and also who can no longer hold them in their arms. These Moms are from four different countries and all different backgrounds but we share something that binds us so closely, only we know what it is like to Mother a child you can’t hold, see, kiss, and watch experience life. Only a bereaved Mom knows how tender the love really is and how one’s heart can still beat after being so broken in ways that will never be mended.

I look forward to five days of just you and me Theo. You and me, healing, living, and feeling peace together. Life is so busy with regular life, two precious boys and a loving husband at home. This gives me time to just be present with you for a few days and to celebrate you as the son you are to me with women who truly get it. I have no idea what this week will look like, and frankly I am open to whatever comes.

Thank you for the most incredible year we have just had together. You changed me in ways I didn’t know needed to grow, we shared the most beautiful 8 months I have shared with anyone, I learned a new depth to love and the gifts have been abundant. My heart is heavy with pain, but it is filled with so much love for you and has enabled me to love others in a deeper more pure way. This is all because you lived. I need you to know that I would never have made a different choice. Even if I knew before you were transferred that you would die, I would still to choose those eight months and a broken heart. Living a life where you never existed to me is a life not worth living. Thank you for choosing me.

Your forever loving Mommy.

Gang of Four 

~ Allyson Williams ~ Leave a comment

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My littlest baby Theo,

Summer is in full swing. This weekend the sun was shining strong, your brothers were spending the days running in a sprinkler, playing soccer, and being super silly and free spirited boys. Your Dad competed in a charity dance competition on Friday night and won first place. I know you were right there beside him during the whole performance. Would you have been a good dancer? Your brothers love to dance and anytime the music is turned on they are grooving! Your Uncle Terry was here all weekend. He would have loved you dearly. We spent some time watching super bike races this afternoon. All four boys loved them, I am sure you too would have been crazy for the speed and power.

I felt your absence every minute of this incredible weekend. It seems so unfair for us to be together making so many memories and you are left to watch from a distance. Do you feel like it is unfair? Do you watch us with a heavy heart wishing as hard as I do it was so different? Do you want to be rolling on the grass with your brothers? Do you want to be a part of the love attacks your brothers get into? Do you feel their love even though it is at a distance?

You sure picked a great Dad. I have been thinking how right you were to pick him. His love for you runs deep. You are forever on his mind. I watch him with Jack and Patrick and think of all the ways you four would have fit perfectly together. The adventures you would have taken with him and the memories you would have made. I wonder how similar you would have been to him. Would you have love the tourism industry? Would have had the love for The Bay of Quinte Region? Would you have volunteered your time in similar ways? Would you have valued simple days with the family? Would have played the piano? Would you have shared his faith in God? Would you have been as thoughtful and as caring as he is? Would you one day be a Dad just like him? When it comes to Dads it doesn’t get better than him. I am so sorry you both can’t share it all.

This experience of losing you comes with so many layers. My heart breaks for me, as your Mom who desperately wants you back in my life. My heart breaks for Jack and Patrick, as they forever lost a brother who they would have adored and would have shared a life so close and so filled with love. My heart breaks for your Dad who lost you, his third son. It was meant to be a gang of four sharing all father and son experiences. My heart breaks for all of your Grandparents who also feel your absence and feel sadness for their children who are heavy with grief. The layers are thick, they are heavy and they are real. These layers are there because you are loved by so many and so very deeply.

I love you, I miss you, I feel you.

Your forever loving Mommy

Anger Simply Doesn’t Serve Me.

~ Allyson Williams ~ Leave a comment

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Theodore,

Today, I am choosing to see the gifts. I am choosing to love you, honour you but not be swallowed up in grief. There are times when this is easy. Today it isn’t easy but that is where I want to be so it is where I will sit, you deserve it and so do I.

I am not angry. I am not angry at you, at God or at anyone else. I have read so many blogs about how grieving parents feel or telling others how to act with a person who is on the journey of losing a child. Most of them don’t feel true to me, even though it is for many. I am not angry at the Mom who pops out babies like it is no big deal, I am not angry at the genuine person who unintentionally says something to me that cuts deep, I am not angry at stranger who has no clue what our path looks like and makes assumptions that sting, or at the person who wants to point out all that I am blessed with instead of acknowledging our loss as a profoundly painful loss, and I am certainly not angry at those who love us yet have no clue how to support us or have figured maybe we are over it or will be shortly (ps we won’t be, like ever). You see Theodore, our journey and my journey of becoming a Mom tells me that most people are good, most people put love first, and being angry doesn’t serve any one. We have no clue what others’ paths look like, we too can make assumptions but what would that serve? We all have challenges, I am happy for the Mom who never struggled with making a family, she probably deserved that break because in life her heart will have to tend to other challenges.

Not being angry is one of the many gifts you gave me. My heart longs for you in unimaginable ways. My heart doesn’t want to allow anger to take up space where love and compassion belong.

Today, I am going to be that person who points out all the blessings even if it is annoying to myself. I have learned a new depth to love, deepened compassion for others, empathy for people’s situation I don’t understand, a desire to be a better version of me, to choose love even when it is hard and especially to those who are acting in unloveable ways, to find gratitude for all the simple blessings, to celebrate everything big and small, to see that in tragedy there are beautiful moments, memories and gifts that should be seen and appreciated, and acknowledging the gratitude for all that we have been given in these circumstances doesn’t mean I am happy this all happened. I am incredibly grateful for God as I know he weeps with me when my heart is overflowing with grief, I am never alone in my loneliest moments as he always walks beside me in this journey.

Theodore, your lessons, and your gifts are abundant and I am grateful for it all. I love you. I miss you like I have never missed anyone before, but today I am celebrating you even though it doesn’t feel easy.

Your forever loving and grateful Mommy.

I see you. 🐘

~ Allyson Williams ~ Leave a comment


Theo my love,

My memory of you is so vivid, the weight of you laying on my chest, your birth, your perfect toes and your adorable nose. It was all so beautiful yet so fleeting and so permanently etched in my memory.

Saying I miss you is beyond an understatement. I have written you only a million love notes lately even though they have never been written down. Life is so busy, I feel like I haven’t had time alone to pour my love into you. I have been writing to you in the shower, while I drive, as cook dinner and any moment my mind is free to wonder back towards you. Do you hear them? Can you feel my heart yearning for you? Do you see me seeing you everywhere? Do you hear my private cries and the prayers I pray for us to meet again?

The permanency of our situation is starting to feel so heavy. I cry out for you to be given back, it is so selfish as I believe you had higher work to do but I want you. I want you in my arms, I want my lips to kiss those cheeks again, I want to see your eyes I never got to lay mine on. I simply want so much and it is something no one can ever grant me. There are no prayers loud enough, or powerful enough to return you to me.

I will carry you with me through life, I will see it all, all I wanted to experience with you. Your first birthday and all the other ones to follow, your first day at school and your last, your first girlfriend or maybe a boyfriend (I don’t judge and would love you either way) and then the day you got married and started a family should that have been something you would have desired. These are all the big moments for us, but I will see you in all the simply pleasures in life as well, rolling down a hill, riding a bike, running in circles and falling down dizzy, going to a fair, petting an animal, smelling a flower, catching snow on your tongue, your first swim in the ocean, you loving others. . . There is no time I won’t see you, it is impossible. As time rolls on what I see will change but seeing you won’t.

I put my heart into your hands. I trust this journey. It just isn’t easy nor will it ever truly be. How can it when the most precious part of me died? Your spirit and your purpose lives on and with that comfort comes to my heart. I am not sure how to stop wishing with my whole being for this to be so different? How to do accept the blessings and accept none of this can be undone? How do I love without the pain?

I love you, I see you, and I miss you in everything I do.

Your forever loving Mommy

The Days Roll On

~ Allyson Williams ~ Leave a comment


My precious Teddy,

It is 5:22 am, the birds are singing, your brothers and Father are fast asleep and I am awake thinking of you. 150 days ago you entered into the world and left 22 precious minutes later. My heart met yours, my eyes saw the wonder you really were. You were so beautiful to me, and when I looked at you I instantly saw a video reel of an entire lifetime that will never be lived, all that you would never get a chance to experience all that I desperately wanted to experience with you.

Tomorrow is Mother’s Day, then Monday marks the 5 month anniversary of your birth and passing. It is hard to believe so many days have simply rolled on by. Tomorrow I should be waking up, your Dad and I exhausted from another night with little sleep, seeing your smiling little face, having your two brothers make breakfast with Dad and all of us together in bed laughing and loving each other, feeling so grateful I am the one you three call Mom.

As I lay here I wonder what you would have looked like at 5 months old. Would you have grown super fast and been a big boy like your brothers? Would you have been funny or taken on the roll of being our more serious baby? Would you have been easy going and a joy to take everywhere or would we have struggled to keep a schedule that works for you? The list of things I wonder is endless. What I know and never need to wonder is that I would have loved and appreciated you, I would have accepted you for whoever you wanted to be, I would have supported you in any and all of your dreams and would have provided you with all the tools to become the man you wanted to be.

Tomorrow is Mother’s Day. . . Tomorrow I will celebrate being blessed with three boys. I will celebrate having the honour to Mother each one in their own personal journeys. Your journey is one I wouldn’t have chosen for you, and I am sure in many ways this is preparing me for journeys Jack and Patrick may take one day that I too wouldn’t have chosen and yet will support. You have given me the hardest job a Mother can ever have and that is to mother a child I no longer hold anywhere but in my heart.

I love you, I know you have been with me this morning and I know this is why I couldn’t sleep. Thank you for choosing me to be your Mom. It is an honour to hold you in my heart and to know with the millions of woman you could have chosen, it was me you wanted. I am blessed and grateful.

Loving you is easy, living with you only in my heart is hard.

It is now 5:55am, thank you for waking me up to spend this time together.

Your forever loving Mommy

Just a Little Picnic 

~ Allyson Williams ~ Leave a comment


Theodore my love,

What a beautiful afternoon today was. Your brothers played around you, shared lunch at your grave and embodied what being a free spirit really means. As they ran up and down the hill holding hands, laughing, and falling down my heart sang.

I know you were there with us. I know there are times you wish things were different as well. Jack told me today that you were crying and that you needed me. Truth is you have me, you have all of me and more. My heart is all of yours and will always will be no matter how much time passes and how tight or loose my grip is. You are my heart. Every beat my heart beats is for you.

I felt such peace as when we were together today. I wasn’t sad, nor happy but simply at ease. Life since the moment you left my world has been forever changing. I am so grateful today that I was there with you, your brothers and with the sun shining bright and the water glistening. It truly was beautiful.

Life often feels unfair and rather random. I know there is purpose and reason but my heart can’t help but hurt for those who like me had to say good bye to someone when their love runs so deep it feels like an impossible task to do, yet aren’t given any other option.

Theodore, my sweet baby boy, I love you. I am always here, you never need to need me, I am only a light flicker, static in my ears, smelling your scent, or a windshield wiper wipe away. You are forever in my heart and on my mind.

Your forever loving Mommy.

The Ending will be Beautiful 🐘

~ Allyson Williams ~ Leave a comment


My dearest Theodore

Summer is on the way. I am thinking about how much you would have loved spending time at Papineau Lake this year and how much you loved it last year. I am looking forward to the memories we will make but knowing you won’t be included in them makes me feel like they will be incomplete.

You never got to feel the wind on your face or the sun at your back. You will never wish upon a star or pull apart a dandelion wondering if she loves you or not. How could your life be so beautiful and fulfilled, yet there are so many things I wished for you. How do I let go of all I wanted for you and accept you received all you needed? I know this to be true but I can’t help to long for more for you. For you, I wish it all. . .

Yet I know you had it all. You experienced something many of us never have the opportunity. Through this I was blessed to be the one to learn how to love unconditionally. Maybe that is all we ever need. Maybe if we were all blessed to be loved so deeply, so truly and purely that no matter what we did, thought or felt the other would do nothing but love us through it and for us to love all other beings in such a way as well and then we too would feel completely fulfilled.

You said you wanted me to let go. You want my heart to heal. I have thought long and hard about our love story. I know how I want the ending to look like. I want the last chapter to describe how I did let go, and how I am able to love you wholeheartedly and how the profound pain and sadness is replaced with peace. I will simply love you, our experience and accept this is all it was supposed to be, and no longer long for more and to be grateful for all I have.

Our story has been beautiful, it can’t end with me forever hurting. . . This couldn’t have been the plan.

I know when things feel hard it is a time of growth. This has been the biggest personal growth transformation I have experienced. I am far from reaching our last chapter. I frankly have no clue how to arrive there but I do know it is how it has to end. I love you too much to allow myself to feel a lifetime of profound sadness. You have been my greatest teacher, I am confident you will guide me down the path to reach our destination of loving, remembering and accepting of all that is with pure peace in my heart.

I am not there. I have haven’t arrived, I am so far from the end but at least I have a destination to navigate towards and with you as my compass I have no doubt one day I will arrive and be so grateful as I look back at the journey we took together to find pure unconditional love and peace in our hearts.

Thank you. My love for you is and has always been unconditional. I now need to learn to find my way to loving all beings in the same manner. Maybe then it will truly feel like peace on earth.

Your forever loving Mommy.