before. and after.

We’re going to have to tell her.

Soon.

We’re going to have to tell my sweet 7 year old something that will cause her to grieve. It will prompt a sadness in her that I won’t be able drive away with hugs or snuggles. I won’t be able to distract her, to make it better or fix it. It’s a loss she won’t understand. It’s a loss I don’t understand. It just is.

Thank you to Jenn at Mommy Needs Coffee for sharing this amazing post from Breed ‘Em and Weep. It was only after I selected these paragraphs to highlight that I realized Jenn had chosen some of the same words to quote:

Tomorrow we will tell the girls about a difficult loss. It is a peculiar thing to sit on the edge of your child’s bed, watching her sleep, knowing that tomorrow you will say something that will stop her heart briefly and force her through a door she would not have chosen herself. Children do not take kindly to loss, and why should they? As adults we can barely stand it, barely have the ability to comprehend the who-was-who-now-isn’t, the what-was-that-now-is-lost . . .

. . . I rock some more. I think: Loss is loss; there is rarely recovery. Recovery is a myth; change is what comes after a loss, not recovery. There is merely change . . .

. . . I would stand between them and the losses of the world if I could. This is why I cry. Because I am clever; I know well how to create secret compartments and tuck away unpleasantries as needed. It has not served me well over time, not really, but I have a talent for it.

My parent’s divorce is final as of today. My father will continue to live in the home they shared for the last 30 years, twenty minutes away. My mother is retiring and moving to a new home, which is a two day drive from us. She will be leaving on May 11th. Yes. That is Mother’s Day.

11 days from today.

FavoriteSon already knows. But, we are going to have to tell PinkGirl.

soon.