Month: October 2019

Coexisting with Grief & Joy

On By katiemeffordLeave a comment

One of the first resources I discovered when the dust had settled a bit after losing Ollie was “The Joyful Mourning“, a podcast for grieving mothers. I put some headphones in and turned on one of the episodes to listen to while I got some things done around the house. I didn’t make it too far in before I was reaching for my phone to write down notes. Ashlee Proffitt was speaking so much truth into my soul from one angel momma to another.

One of the first things I wrote in my notes was this:

“Celebrating a good thing in life and mourning a hard thing in life are not mutually exclusive. They do not have to cancel each other out.”

Ashlee Proffitt, The Joyful Mourning Podcast

That theme has seemed to be a common thread in life since losing Ollie. I’ve heard many times that for women struggling with infertility or pregnancy loss, seeing other women pregnant or having a baby can be difficult. While I understood that as much as I could at the time, it wasn’t until I lost Ollie that I realized how truly difficult those things are.

More often then not, when you get pregnant, you also find out a friend (or two, or three) is expecting too. It’s a special and fun thing to experience together. You compare due dates, guess genders and talk about nursery decor. No one ever expects that one of those babies will never take a breath outside it’s mother’s womb….that one will be burying their baby while the other paints their nursery.

All of this to say that God has been teaching me an awful lot about coexisting with grief and joy. I do not hate or resent every pregnant woman. In fact, the friends that were also carrying babies while I carried Ollie will forever hold a special place in my heart. Their babies will be a constant beautiful reminder to me of Ollie and the joy I felt while pregnant with him. It will be such an honor to see them grow over the years, to hold them, to love them and pray over them. That is the joy of it all.

But the grief still shows up…and that’s okay. I’m learning that the same tears that fall in joy of your friend having her long desired baby can also fall five minutes later for missing your son. The happiness when someone announces they’re pregnant can switch to sadness because you’ve barely learned to walk into the nursery without tears. One can exist right along side the other and I don’t have to feel guilty about it. I can celebrate a friend and grieve the loss of my son in the same minute, if thats what is needed.

Is it easy? No…mainly because you never know how those days will hit you. Some days are easy, others are impossible and there is no way to predict or control when that wave of grief will decide to hit like a tsunami. You just have to take it in stride. I still haven’t learned to grieve….does anyone ever, really? I’m just doing my best to let both joy and grief exist and take up their space when needed. Some days I balance that perfectly and other days it all falls shattered on the floor but I suppose that is human. All that matters is that I keep picking up the pieces and moving forward.

Grieving when life moves forward…

On By katiemefford1 Comment

It’s been one month since we laid our baby boy’s earthly body to rest in a cemetery just a few minutes up the road from us. On one hand, life seems to have rushed forward after we left the grave that day, and on the other, I still feel frozen in time, standing at the foot of Ollie’s freshly dug grave.

My mother has told me several times throughout tough seasons of grief, whether mine or that of someone close to me, that one of the hardest parts of grief is that the world moves on when your world seems to have come to a screeching halt. I’m not sure I understood that until Ollie but now it’s crystal clear.

In the days and weeks since Ollie passed, life never once slowed down outside of us. Countless times I have become frustrated and upset that the world….that God…..didn’t seem to “give us a break”. The past year or so before we lost Ollie was a hard one. Layoffs, car repairs, a totaled car, more car repairs and so many more moments of “Really, God? Can’t we catch a break?”…and then we lost Ollie. Somewhere in all of that, I figured we’d catch a break now. We’d lost the thing we wanted most, our son, so now, nothing else would happen for a while. Funny enough, we came home from the hospital after having said our goodbyes to Ollie and walked into a fridge that had somehow been left cracked open and all our food inside of it had gone bad. I remember making a joke about how God had a cruel sense of humor as we threw a fridge full of food away and ordered a pizza. I regret those words now but in the moment, that’s how I felt….that I had done something to anger God and now He was sitting in a cloud somewhere zapping us with hit after hit in order to punish us.

It wasn’t until I verbalized these thoughts out loud to my therapist that I realized how wrong I was. I told her that I kept wondering “How stubborn was I being that God had to take my son away to get a point across?” She paused briefly and said something along the lines of “Katie… That doesn’t sound very much like the God we serve, does it? ” and she was right. It’s not supposed to be this way. God didn’t design this world and speak it into existence with pain, suffering and death in mind. Sin brought those things into our world and it pains him every single time one of His children is hurt by it. It hurt His heart when Ollie died. He has grieved with us and walked along side us in this journey.

This morning in church, I had a realization that has further driven that point home for me. We were singing a song I’ve heard several times, “Resurrecting” by Elevation Worship. There’s a line towards the end of the song that says “Our God has robbed the grave”. Now, growing up in church, I’ve heard that phrase several times too in reference to our Jesus that rose on the third day and defied death. In that moment though, I was thinking of Ollie and realized….Jesus robbed Ollie’s grave too. He took away death’s final say in Ollie’s life and in mine.

Death says “You will never see Ollie again.” but GOD says “You will see your boy again, perfect, healed and whole.”

HALLELUJAH! Death does not have the last word here.

While it is so easy for me to cry and scream in frustration over all that has happened (and, trust me, I still do. Just last night I asked Andrew through sobs if God was mad at me because we just can’t seem to catch a break), I’m beginning to see that I can choose how to grieve. I can grieve as though death has won or I can grieve with HOPE that God has the final say, not death.

Some days, I grieve as though death has won and those days are hard, hopeless, gut wrenching days. But on the days I choose to remember the truth of my grief, that I have hope in Christ that I will see my Ollie again, I grieve with hope. And yes, grieving with hope is still painful. It still knocks me to my knees at time and there are still so many tears for the loss of what we thought Ollie’s story would be, there is also joy. Joy that his story doesn’t end here and that one day, Ollie will be in my arms again.

The tomb where soldiers watched in vain
Was borrowed for three days
His body there would not remain
Our God has robbed the grave
Our God has robbed the grave (yes He has, yes He has)

Your name, Your name
Is victory
All praise, will rise
To Christ our king

By Your spirit I will rise
From the ashes of defeat
The resurrected King, is resurrecting me

In Your name I come alive
To declare Your victory
The resurrected King, is resurrecting me
By Your spirit I will rise

“Resurrecting” by Elevation Worship

Butterflies & Sunsets

On By katiemeffordLeave a comment

I knew that the day we went home without Ollie would be one of the hardest. We had 54 perfect hours with him but we had to go home. That Sunday, it all felt so final. The last time I’d hold him, the last time time I’d kiss him, the last time I’d see him on this side of heaven. Andrew read him a book, we told him how much we loved him and wished his story included more time on earth with us. I whispered to him that he had a special assignment up in heaven….once God said we were ready, Ollie needed to pick out his little brother or sister and send them down to us. We signed all of the discharge papers, arranged for the funeral home to come pick his body up, handed our sweet boy over to the nurses, loaded our stuff onto a cart and left the hospital with empty arms.

The next morning, we met my mom at the funeral home to arrange when the funeral would be, see his casket and get all of the details figured out. They brought his casket into the room so we could arrange all of the things we wanted in there just how we liked them. We lined his casket with a blue blanket we’d bought that said “mama” and “dada” on it. On top of that we laid his bunny lovey that we’d bought when we found out we were pregnant, his knit cradle & cover from the amazing Bridget’s Cradle ministry that they would place him inside of, a wedding photo of Andrew & I, letters to him from Andrew & I, and his first Bible Storybook that his Yaya had bought him.

All the little things we chose to put in Ollie’s casket

I asked the lady at the funeral home if Ollie was there. I knew they were going to pick him up either the night before or that day. She told me he was and my heart jumped. We continued with the rest of the meeting and at the very end, I asked if I could see him again. She was hesitant, knowing his little body changed rapidly as time went on…but that didn’t matter to me. He was there and I needed to hold him again. We agreed to let my mom go see him and see if she thought I’d be okay seeing him in his current state. A few minutes later, my mom walked back in the room with a bundle of blankets containing my sweet Ollie James. Immediately the tears started flowing. When we’d left the hospital the night before, I thought I’d never get to hold him in my arms again. I unwrapped him from the blanket and held him close. I wanted to hold him forever. I would’ve just camped out at the funeral home all week if they’d let me but more things had to be done. We said goodbye to our Ollie again and continued on with the planning…. picking out flowers to go on his casket and picking his lot at the cemetery.

Holding Ollie one last time at the funeral home

The hard part of that I didn’t see coming was knowing my baby was still in my town, alone, at a funeral home and I wasn’t holding him. His funeral was not until the end of the week and knowing that he was still here, not yet buried, but I wasn’t holding him was hands down the hardest part of the week. Every single time I thought about that, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I would be lying if I said I didn’t wonder in the middle of the night how hard it would be to break into a funeral home to hold him again.

His funeral was Friday morning. We kept it small and simple. A graveside service with just Andrew & I, our parents, my siblings, and Pastor Anthony and his wife in attendance. It was short and sweet and so perfect, just like Ollie’s life. The flowers on his casket were a perfect combination of whites and soft blues, with touches of rosemary from my Mom’s garden, just like my wedding bouquet had in it. We stayed as they put him in the ground and filled his grave with dirt. I’m pretty sure if they’d let me, I would’ve just gotten in the grave with him. It felt as if they were burying my heart, and in a way, they were.

Ollie’s casket & flowers

I go back to his grave almost daily. In the days and weeks since losing him, I’ve felt what I can only explain as a feeling of emptiness, like something was hollowed out from deep within me. But when I go to his grave, I feel him there. I know it’s just his earthly body but it’s as though my heart knows he’s near. He sends me little signs when I’m there too…butterflies and beautiful sunsets.