This is our third fall without Emily. Someone told me recently that the feeling of loss never goes away completely but that the grief itself loses its strong grip on you. That's a pretty good way of putting it. A professor I work with who lost a child in an auto accident said, "It screams against the order of the universe to lose a child. You never completely 'get over it,' but you do learn to live differently." She recently spoke of how we so often fear the wrong things. Death has no victory over us; we need not fear it. Like the Apostle Paul said, "To live is Christ, to die is gain." The "gain" will be to live forever in the presence of our Savior and of our loved ones who've gone before us. The living, though, is sweet because we're walking with others and experiencing the journey together -- with both its joys and sorrows.
We continue to learn from people like this professor. There's a special "knowing" -- an awareness, an empathy -- that parents mourning the loss of their children share with one another. We still don't always know what to say to each other. But we know. We just know.
I'm thankful for that.
