A due date is a funny thing. It's probably not something you really remember if your baby lives, but if your baby doesn't, well it becomes one more thing in the litany of memories, the ritual of remembrance. It becomes one more day we mark.And today was Gabe's due date. Perhaps, a year later, I have a better perspective. This time last year I was standing at the ocean, at San Simeon, watching waves in moonlight. I watched them crash over rocks, making you think that they would sweep away everything in their wake, and I watched the ocean roll back out, and the rocks remained. And I suddenly understood, with a bolt of clarity, what grief was.
It is to be a rock in the ocean, at high tide. Struggling to keep your head above water, struggling to understand, struggling to keep breathing and not be overwhelmed. This was our test, Mr. Spit and I, to hold on to each other, to hold on to Gabe's memory, but to carry on.
And we have. We still do. It is a daily choice, to live in this world, and not the world that we want to be in. There are daily reminders. I don't know that it won't ever stop hurting me to see women complain about their kids. I think it will always hurt that Gabe is not here.
But, we are here, and here we remain. In lives with joy and sorrow. Holding on and hanging in. Changed.
I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory." "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
1 Cor 15:50-57
