Tomorrow would have been my daughter’s 21st birthday. This will be the fourth birthday I’ve had to endure remembering she is no longer here to celebrate them. Can I just say it isn’t any easier to swallow the pain and grief that rises up in my throat today than it was on her 18th birthday just one month after she died.

So I ask – when does it stop? When does the pain and grief that rise up in my throat stop? I push it back down again and again, yet it rises up and makes me sick to my stomach. I think her birthday is harder than any other date. Why, not sure, but perhaps it has something to do with how hard it was to have her in the first place.

I have written about that before, so I won’t go into it again. But it certainly could have some bearing on why this date causes me so much anguish. Then perhaps it might have something to do with the many years of dealing with her chronic illness and sometimes sub par healthcare that maybe, just maybe that sickening feeling I get in my throat is anger.

Anger towards her many caretakers. I’ll never know. But what I do know is that this has to stop. This pit in my stomach that comes every November 30th. I know it’s another one of those times when I have to find a way to make peace with it all.

Making peace and taking comfort enables me to move forward. Yet it is one of the hardest things to do as a griever. Taking comfort in what – the fact that she is no longer suffering. Well I’d challenge you on that because I’d ask why did she have to suffer at all. Why couldn’t she have been spared her illness like so many other kids. Why her? Why me?

Then someone said to me recently “why not her and why not me” – God doesn’t guarantee that we will lead a blessed life always – He doesn’t guarantee that life won’t have some bumps in the road. But He does guarantee that He is with us always. That He will comfort those who are mourning. That He will heal the broken-hearted.

That I know to be true.

until next time

m