When new loss triggers old loss

This post is long overdue, but things have been a little crazy. So it is catch up night on the blog.

About  4 weeks ago, our doggie suddenly passed away. Cassi had been with me for 9 years and had been Little Man's best buddy from the beginning.  Cassi was patient, kind and generally wonderful as Isaiah crawled all over, including on her! He would use her to pull up on and try and walk and she would just sit there patiently letting it happen. He would "exchange" toys with her, because in a babies mind the one the dog is chewing on must be more interesting than my toy :) And she would even help him clean his plate at every meal!

I knew it would be hard when she passed, but I really thought I had a few more years with her. Little Man handled it for the most part amazingly well. He commented that "Jesus took his dog", not in anyway angry about it just kind of matter of fact. While he still occasionally asks for her or where she is mostly he has moved on..during the daytime hours.

What I forgot to anticipate in the midst of my own grief, was what loss was going to trigger for him.  It has been 4 weeks and we are mostly back to a normal routine. For the first few nights he was a "popcorn" child....up and down, up and down checking, rechecking and verifying that I was still here, that I had not disappeared. He would only fall asleep if he was touching me, could see me, feel me. His world of safety had been disrupted. Everything he had grown to believe would be there, the things he had trusted would be steady were not anymore. He is too young really to understand death and that life will end. And while he can not verbalize it completely, while he can not truly comprehend it all at 4, his body remembers loss...his brain stored the emotions..the fear..the hurt. And so we take a few steps back in order to move forward. We pause..regroup as a family and re-establish safety. We talk..oh how great it is now to be able to talk to him and have him talk. I love the growth we have experienced and while those weeks were hard I love seeing where we came to on the other side!

We love you Cassi girl and we miss you tons. Waiting to see you again at the rainbow bridge!

When grief looks like...well grief

      He sits in my lap, eyes sad, holding tightly to my finger and asks to see it again. A moment of hesitation, I momentarily question myself and then tell him of course. I hit play again, he has seen the video a number of times, he has danced to the music, commented at the pictures but today it seems to evoke a different emotion. Part way through the video he shifts to my other leg, wraps his arms around my arm, his eyes are watery he is quiet, head resting on my chest. I start to talk to him, talk him through the events. He asks to see other videos, starts to flip through my computer, so I play the one year home video. We make it through the video, he is crying, silent tears running down his face and then he looks at me and starts to seek reassurance.

Grief strikes in a new way this time. He is growing, learning, developing. He is processing on a different level than before and this time he feels sadness, loss and fear that the pattern will repeat. He cries for ten minutes or so, seeking arms of comfort and verbal reassurance that I am here, for always, he seeks hugs and words of reassurance from the friends in the room that they are here for him.

For the first time I think he understands the feelings of loss. For the first time he questions where people are, if he will see them again. He wakes then next morning and says he missed someone when they were gone....and asks will they go away again. My heart breaks a little. It is so easy as an adult to understand that physical distance between people means time between visits can be long (i.e. my friends in CA, my parents and various friends scattered around the US), but time and distance are abstract concepts to little minds. It is also a fact of life that people come and go from our lives...easy (or at least easier) as an adult to see that, but how do you explain that to a child.

I sit tonight four nights later still processing what happened that night. Still processing how to help him understand the loss he has experienced. That I can not protect him from the pains of people leaving our lives in future, but that I will always be here for him as he grieves those losses. And most importantly I am very aware of the loss he has already experienced and that I honor and respect whatever feelings that brings. That I know our family, the us, comes only because he, as a tiny baby had to experience the greatest loss.

I will hold him. love him, reassure him as he continues to grow and develop. I will take the anger and the sad of grief.  I will hold my child as he walks through all of that, and I will hold the hand of the young man as he walks through it again later. When my adoption was approved the text/email I sent out was "he is mine and I am his and we are a family" Today that rings more true than it did almost 3 years ago. We are a family and we will work through all that comes and has already come our way.

Growth it is beautiful....painful.....amazing to watch and experience.

Little Man I promise to always hold you up whether we are giggling or crying!