Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Capture your grief-Day 16, Creative grief

There is such a deep-rooted yearning that we feel when our beloved children die.  This yearning hurts so bad yet it also inspires us to get creative to do something beautiful in memory of our child.  Have you done anything in memory of your child?  

I've done a lot actually.  When I am feeling my worst, I either want to do nothing and basically just exist, or I want to put that grieving energy to use.  The first night we got home from the hospital I couldn't sleep.  I knew I needed to get everything out of my head before I could even think about sleep, so I came here and wrote down Kayla's entire birth story from start to finish.  Everything that happened, every emotion, every fear, everything beautiful about her birth and existence.  Once I was finished, I literally felt wiped out, and I was able to sleep.

A few days later, I made a video for her.  It is a montage of the pictures we had for her, starting with the pics of the positive pregnancy tests, and ending with a pic of her grave.  I set it to music and shared it with our close family and friends.  There is such an overwhelming feeling of wanting to show off your child like any parent would, and this allowed me to do that.  Despite only having her with us for a day, I had many happy photos of my pregnancy, and many memories I wanted to preserve.

My husband and I also got tattoos for her.  He got a beautiful letter K with angel wings on either side.  I got her footprint with her name and birth/death date.  We've been planning on doing a memorial garden ever since she passed, but so far the timing just hasn't been right with getting the yard ready for it.  But I've been collecting things over the last two years to put in it.  So far we've got an angel statue with an archway to go over it, some butterflies, a stone with a nice message engraved on it, a lantern with butterflies on it and of course we'll have flowers.  I cannot wait until it is finished.  We plan to do it first thing in the spring.

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