Take the pictures…lots and lots and lots of them.
Memories are strange things, and the human brain - maybe all brains - have this skill for storing things deeply inside that will hurt too much to remember later. We think we will remember all the significant moments in crystal clear detail for forever, but we won’t. Time changes, blurs, or even takes them. I think sometimes that’s even a good thing, a gift God gives us when the burden is too heavy to carry so it’s tucked away and guarded until we can handle it again. But, when it’s the people and moments you love, you’ll want to keep every moment possible. So take the picture. Give yourself the gift of that time stamped image that will bring it all back.
I took many, many photos of Griffin his whole life. Some would say an obscene amount for the last year once Salt Lake told us we were running out of options and the clock was running out of minutes. But I’m so glad I did. There’s seldom a day I don’t have at least one picture or video of Griffin to look back on and, besides my faith and family, these are my lifelines - so many moments captured and frozen in time to revisit whenever it crushes me that I can’t reach out and scoop him up into a hug. They also correct my memory when I get it wrong or forget, and remind me when the grief colors them in unwelcome shades of how vibrant and beautiful and perfectly colored it all was. They ground me in the moments I need it most.
As we gave Reagan a bath and tucked her in last night, it was like a lightening bolt to my heart when I realized that was the last night, 1 year ago, we were given the gift of tucking Griffin into his own bed. The last night we tag teamed carrying Griffin and his oxygen concentrator and feeding equipment upstairs despite the physical exhaustion of the day. The last time we got to lay in our bed and contentedly listen to his laughter, growls, and claps drift across the hall and through baby monitor to us while he talked to what I always assumed were his angels that visited him every night.
I never dreamed when I got him up this very morning a year ago, that it would be the last time I would go into his room and get to see him light up with pure unfiltered joy that I had come to get him and we got to start our day - I think he knew and acknowledged what a precious gift that was in a way most of us never manage. I didn’t know it would be the last time I would get him dressed, haul all of his equipment downstairs despite my exhaustion, draw up and give him his meds as I prayed yet again one day soon he wouldn’t need so many or even any of them. I didn’t know it would be the last morning I set him on this very couch I now sit on, and turn on his favorite morning cartoons to watch in one of his favorite places as we cuddled and giggled together. The last day we would do anything normal in the one place that always felt safe and like everything would be ok. I didn’t know it was the last day that home would truly and wholly feel like home. Didn’t know that in less than 12 hours I would pack him up and take him from our home for the last time and the rest of his life would be in the hospital. I just knew he was getting worse and I watched with fear and anger as the minutes and his body inched us closer and closer to another hospital stay with so many unknowns and uncertainties.
I don’t have any photos of these lasts that mean the world to me now and that I wish I would have cherished more. But that’s often the catch-22 with lasts, you don’t know that that’s what they are until after the fact.
What I do have are a host of other photos of those moments though; and even though this day I was exhausted, anxious, and fearful - even though those things tinged the beauty of those lasts in a way I never would have wanted had I known - I have a million other moments where I was able to fully soak up the incredible gift that was life with Griffin even with all the struggles and worries and extra, and I can visit them in full color and all their beautiful glory. I can give myself grace that I did the best I could in this day; reminding myself that life is hard and messy, and feelings are not mutually exclusive so we can be all the things all at the same time, and that it’s ok if we don’t get it right every time.
So take the photos. Take a breath. Pause whatever is going on and just bask in all that is right and beautiful and perfectly imperfect in your life, because it’s all passing and impermanent - but the memories you’re making are not. Give yourself that kindness…that grace…that irreplaceable gift.
Comments