Loss

We had a major loss in our family this past weekend so we have spent a large portion of our days in Nanaimo staying with family. We spent the weekend in hotels and then Glenn stayed with his mom while I came home with Micah. Tuesday night I headed back to Nanaimo where M and I stayed with my mom because his other Grandma needed a bit of peace and a toddler (no matter how funny and distracting) is anything but peaceful and quiet . Glenn stayed with his mom because that's where he needed to be this week and sometimes in life you have to choose between two places you want to be. He made the right choice.

I have to wonder how much of it M truly understands. He knows that things aren't quite right in his world and his routine has pretty well been thrown out the window. He knows that people who are really important to him are sad. Little fellows pick up on how everyone around them is feeling.

I hope he knows that he is now missing a truly wonderful person in his life but I think this is the part he won't grasp and I'm a bit sad for that. As he grows older he will know his grandpa through the stories people tell him and the pictures he is shown. This is not the same as having those memories which are just his own. I hope his cousins tell him stories of what his grandpa was like as they knew him because what they will remember will be dramatically different than what the adults will remember. Their memories will be similar to what M would have known.

During all this sadness there have been lovely moments too, as there always is. Life manages to give us some balance with a little good to make up for the bad/sad. M has started calling our dog Mokey "Mo Mo" which I think is too cute. Grandma taught him to say Ho Ho Ho when we were going to see Santa since he was having such a hard time saying Santa. We managed to get a pretty decent Santa picture taken seconds before he started to cry and holler.

The ultimate moment this week though was that M learned "Cheers" This means that if he has his bottle and you have a drink in your hand, he is going to come up and tap his bottle to your glass, wait for you to say cheers and then take a big swig. His daddy is teaching him how to give a big "Ahhhh" after the swig. It's one of the funniest things I've seen him do in a while. We may regret this little trick later on but for right now it's a great distraction and pretty darn funny to see.

So, my wish today is that all the broken hearts in the family will slowly heal. That all the people I love get at least one bright spot in every day and that M never truly understands the sadness that those around him are feeling right now.