The Day After
I didn’t even realize until just now that what I wrote just prior to Wednesday’s post about Bronson’s sudden and tragic death was about reuniting with God.
I could never have imagined that just 6 days later, I would be relying on that image to help carry me through losing Bronson.
But here we are.
Clearly God was preparing me. He’s been preparing both Justin and me, we just didn’t know this is what He was preparing us for.
Today, the waves of grief struck us at random times and the tears just came. The hugs from friends buoyed us and at times we thought we were okay, but then there we were again with tears streaming down.
I want to say thank you to all of you who prayed for us in telling our children the sad news Wednesday night,
They took it exactly as we expected them to.
God gave us the words and the space for each to grieve as need be.
I wish my lap was bigger and that I had two more arms so that I could have held them all at the same time.
Justin and I sat on couches facing each other, two kids apiece, holding them as they sobbed. Locking eyes with him as our kids absorbed the shock was the only thing that got me through.
His calm face, but tears silently coming down.
There is nothing we can do to take away their pain. This is something they must walk through, but they are not alone. They have Justin and I to lean on and guide them through this incredibly difficult time.
There were lots of questions and even more tears. I don’t know if I understood a word Embry said the rest of the night, but that’s okay. We knew she’d have the hardest time with this, so we just held her as her body shook uncontrollably.
Aubyn was full of questions and had even more today. Unfortunately, most of them are questions we’ll never be able to fully answer, just give our best guesses.
Like the most basic one, “Why?”
Or sweet Edley’s question/statement, “He could just come back from Heaven, you know?”
Or the harder one, “How?”
Some details we just can’t share and we pray our vague age appropriate answers satisfy their desire to know more.
We stepped outside to get away from the heaviness of the room, knowing that outside is always better for us.
We walked hand in hand and Aubyn asked us to share stories of Bronson, so we did and we all laughed remembering an epic water gun fight in our old backyard.
He was such a kid at heart, nevermind an actual kid in age.
Only 25.
That’s one of the things that has been hitting me the hardest.
He had so much life ahead of him.
Before bed, Aubyn asked me, “What would you tell him if you could tell him one more thing?”
The first thing that came to mind was that he mattered and that we love him. And that while he may have thought no one would be affected by his passing, he couldn’t have been further from the truth.
This kid touched so many people’s lives and he didn’t even realize it.
But now, more than anything, I wish I’d given him a hug on Tuesday when he left instead of, “Bye Bronson. Have a good one. See ya tomorrow.”
I never suspected there wouldn’t be a tomorrow. None of us did.
There are so many lessons we are learning as a family from this painful tragedy, but the most important is to always tell people you love them. You don’t know if you’ll have another chance to say it.
Pray for all of us as we lay him to rest today. It’s never an easy thing to do, but this one will be harder than any we’ve ever been to, and we’ve been to our fair share.
