It’s been one year since the death of my daughter’s friend. She was only 15. She, her father and two brothers were in the car, when a drunk driver hit them head on. I have been very weepy today. Katie’s death was the 4th of someone close to our family, in the span of little over a year.
The whole series started with the death of my 5 year old son, Keaton.
So you can imagine, that as I try to put into words what I would want to say to Katie’s mama, my heart is gripped with the grief and the ache that only a mother who has lost her child can hold.
Years before death was a visitor in our home, a wise friend once shared with me something that he has taught his children since they were young.
“Yesterday is not today, and today is not tomorrow.”
At the time, I felt the brilliant simplicity of that concept. I tended to get caught up in the emotion of a situation and feel like I am going to feel whatever way I am feeling in that moment, well…forever. This is especially true when hard things have befallen me or my family. I had no idea that those amazing words would carry me through the last 2 years of my life, but I praise God for that true principle every day.
In the days following Keaton’s death, as I was lying in my bed, weeping my soul empty until I had nothing left, I hung on to those words. In the weeks, months and now two years that have followed, I have learned to trust them. Did they bring my beautiful boy back? Sadly, no.
What they DID do is they gave me permission to be a shadow of a human being as my wounds started to heal. That journey was painful beyond all description, reducing me at times to not even wanting to live in this world without my baby. Yesterday is not today and today is not tomorrow.
These beautiful words also leaked hope into my washed up heart. On those days that I tentatively opened one eye in the morning and felt okay to open the other, I could allow that to happen too, because “Yesterday is not today and today is not tomorrow.”
I had to choose to let those words act as a balm and they did. Do I still have wretched days? You bet. Today has been one of them. At my core, I am okay though, because these days are further and farther between and continue to grow so. I can honestly call myself alive and happy most times now, armed with the strength I have earned having traveled through hell. But today…today, I will stay in my pajamas and cry for Katie and Keaton and all that we have loved and lost…today. Tomorrow will be different.