It’s two months today since our sweet baby Ava died, which means it’s been two months since we held her and kissed her and said good-bye to her. And I look back now and I marvel at how God gave us the grace to let Ava go that day. How we were able to hold her and wait for the end to come without completely breaking down. God carried us with amazing incredible strength and for that we can look back and praise Him, even in the midst of the pain of that day.
And we still miss Ava so much, and the ache in our hearts hasn’t gone away. And grief keeps sneaking up on us, where one minute we are fine, and the next minute we are in tears. I see her pictures and I just want to hold her and kiss her and love her, and then I just hope that when she was with us, I loved her enough. I know I tried to spend as much time as I could with her the last few months when she was in hospital, but I obviously couldn’t be with her 24 hours a day if I wanted my other kids to remember that they had a mother. It’s just that now I wish that it had been possible for me to have never left her side. Although I’m grateful once again for the support of friends, and it helped that one of my friends who is a nurse on 4D kinda scolded me when I asked if I loved Ava enough when she was there. :) And I do know that when I wasn’t able to be at the hospital, Ava was receiving a lot of love from the nurses and they were so good to her. I really do think it’s more of a case of me wanting to give her some love right now (oh what I would give for a cuddle with my baby!) that makes me wish I could have given her more then. But the reality is that Ava didn’t feel good alot of time and when she didn’t feel good, she didn’t want to be held. And she slept so much too. She was just a sick little baby, who has now left all that behind and is free from her body of death, and is now enjoying the glory of God in heaven. Praise God.
And it’s kinda sweet, but our little Sophia is the one who tells me that she misses Ava the most. She’ll look sad and I’ll ask her why, and she will tell me that she misses Ava. Actually for the past week she’s been telling me that she misses 3 things…. the stray cat that was hanging out around our house for a while (and thankfully found a home elsewhere), Ava, and our friend’s dog named Duke who she hasn’t seen in a while. Sophie makes me smile.
We were really fortunate to be able to spend some time together at the cottage this weekend. Some friends were there for a bit as well and the weather couldn’t have been nicer if we had ordered it online.
And yes, Jason was able to borrow the Gator from work and it certainly did alot to enhance Jason and the kid’s enjoyment of the weekend, I’m glad you noticed.
In other news, Erik managed to break his arm almost two weeks ago by falling off the swing… rather inglorious actually as he wasn’t really swinging and in his own words said that he just forgot to jump off. Oh Erik. After the fall he was in a lot of pain that seemed to be getting worse so off to emerg we went. I was a little worried about going there seeing that it was one of Ava’s favorite spots to hang out, but all it did was managed to feel very familiar. Now because Erik wasn’t top priority, we had to wait a while and after a few hours Erik didn’t seem to be in much pain anymore and i was kicking myself for running to emerg so quickly because I was starting to think that it was nothing. But thankfully when the doctor came in she diagnosed a buckle fracture and fitted Erik with a splint. He’s been great about wearing it and taking on and off himself so it hasn’t been that bad. But it’s our first broken bone and I hope it’s our last!
William also distinguished himself last week by coming in 5th place in our school district’s semi-final Cross Country meet. Jason and I were very proud and were also glad that all his running around inside our house has finally paid off. Next week he is off to the finals and I’m already nervous for him, but he’s a pretty good sport and I know he’ll be happy whatever place he comes in.
So life isn’t slowing down for us. But even though it’s been two months since we lost Ava, praise God He is holding on to our hearts and we are doing OK. We miss her like crazy, but we are doing OK.
