I hate this phrase! I hate the tunnel! It is awful. It is long, suffocating, dark and cold. Life should not feel like that but it sometimes does. The feeling may come from a family death, disease, divorce, addiction or poverty. You feel as if you literally must crawl out of your skin, as if another minute, another breath is just too much effort. Then you breath, you breath again and a minute goes by, then another, finally a day. One day turns into a week and a week into a year.
It has been two years, five months, eleven days and fifteen hours since I lost my daughter to cancer. Devastation does not cover the feeling in my heart that day and every day thereafter. A feeling of nausea, an emptiness and a sadness that is pitch black.
Wait…there is a light at the end of the tunnel…
She made life amazing! Although my dark moments are almost too difficult to handle, my joys are more ecstatic than ever before. My heart bursts with love on a daily basis for the life I live now. When Whitney passed away, I was two months pregnant with our daughter, Avery. I had no clue. I was still nursing Whitney, I had not had a cycle and it was nothing short of angelic that I was carrying another daughter that would give me hope. Crazy, right? What is even more scary is that according to the calendar we believe that we conceived Avery the day we found out Whitney was terminal. I remember the day vividly, the phone call from the doctor and our sleepless night with tears that would not end. Were we losing our mind if that was our way of coping? Not at all.
Whitney taught me how to live and Avery saved my life. Leo makes it fun again! Now…two years, five months, eleven days and fifteen hours later, I burst with extreme joy every day as I smother Avery and our baby boy, Leo. I love our life and our family. I love who I have become because of Whitney. I am excited for our future and although there is a void in me that can never be filled, there is also happiness that I never thought possible.
Miss you more today than yesterday but I finally see that light angel.
BELIEVE!
Tracy
Attached is a photo from my kitchen sink window the evening before Thanksgiving as I was preparing the turkey. Always with me.
