Ate a Mrs. B’s biscuit this morning in the swing and pondered on Rosie and Chief and how their deaths have affected my life. I was sitting in the swing and imagining Chief sitting in the double rocking chair and imagining Rosie in the other swing with her children, still at the toddler age, chubby cherubs with blond hair and blue eyes. People always kidded us about Rosie being blond and blue eyed contrasted with our boys’ dark hair and dark eyes. My heart opened with a deep sadness and I had a good cry.

In the middle of my sadness a huge cicada landed on my breakfast plate. Penelope almost got her head caught in the bars of the play pen trying to get at it. It was huge. I’m sure the Lord was trying to distract me from being weepy. I took a photograph of it, counted my blessings, and got up to water my plants and fill the birds baths. But I have to express myself about this today. My writings always pour out and I can’t control them or change the topics.

When you lose a child it’s like your heart has been sliced open and a piece has been carved off. You try to repair the wound but there is always a leak of deep sadness that comes to the surface and chokes off your breath. You can’t deny it and you can’t stop the wave of despair that washes over you. It’s been 21 years since Rosie died in a car accident and the wound is just as fresh as the Sunday morning I received that terrible phone call. It seems like it just happened. The months and years following the loss of a child are emotionally, physically, and mentally exhausting and full of feelings of sorrow, despair, and emptiness.

As a mother you mourn all the things in life that were taken away by your child’s death — the loss of future hopes for your child, the grandchildren never born, all the holiday celebrations with an empty chair. You grieve for your children who have lost a sibling. Ninety-four percent of parents carry enduring grief for their child for the rest of their lives. Eventually you learn how to push the grief down and search for the rays of sunshine to light the path to daily living. Life goes on even when you think you can’t. The pain of a child’s death never goes away you just eventually learn in your own way and in your own time how to live with the grief.

The death of a spouse cuts a different wound on the heart. It’s a deep soulful bereavement. The worse thing about being a widow is the loss of the intimacy and passion of a loving marriage, the loss of the human touch. The loneliness and isolation that’s experienced. Even when surrounded by loving family and friends, there’s a void in life that only your spouse could fill. I know I’m fortunate to have found Chief. We had a deep abiding love and that sustains me on sad days. I know he’s sending me the beautiful cardinals to cheer me and I have millions of happy memories of Chief and Rosalyn to sustain me on my cloudy days. I miss them everyday but I know I’ll be reunited with them one day and that gives me comfort.

One of my dear friends said, “I’ve decided that you can’t be happy or experience joy all the time. Contentment is a daily goal. Then when there is joy or happiness, I truly relish it.”

I’m mostly content in my widowhood now and I’m thankful for my blessing of wonderful friends, my sons and daughter-in-law, my three grandchildren, and my three brothers and their families. I know I’ve been blessed and my days seem to have found purpose in my blog writings.

I hope today finds all my friends and family content.

“True contentment is not having everything, but in being satisfied with everything you have,” — Oscar Wilde.