This week has brought several moments of realizing things we will miss. These moments tend to randomly pop up and make us red-eyed and sniffly at inopportune times. My moment this week was imagining Clifton’s little kid scrawl of his name in the corner of crayon artwork and naturally imagining Ryann’s right along with it only to realize that Ryann’s will never actually happen. Jared’s moment was during our church’s communion service. Our church practices foot washing as a part of the service and a few rows over from us was one of our daddy-friends washing his twin 5-year-old feet, and Jared realized that he never had the chance to share this with Ryann.
These moments are always bittersweet. We can imagine what these moments would have been like, we will experience them with our other children, we experience some of them now vicariously through Ryann’s best friends, but these moments will continue forever and we will never actually know what Ryann would have done in each of these situations. Our image of Ryann will probably become increasingly Picasso-like as we piece together how we think she would have reacted or what her hobbies would have been. We can’t stop ourselves from trying to create a complete portrait of Ryann, but by doing so we start to obscure who she actually was.
Thank heaven for those moments that aren't lost. The memories will be always be there to be treasured.
ReplyDeleteSometimes when I share things with you about Kayla - things she's done, things she's said, things we've done with her - I get a lump in my throat realizing that these are things you and Jared will never get to experience with Ryann. I cried the other day realizing that in my mind, although Kayla and Chloe continue to grow, Ryann is the same size she was in May 2011 when I saw her last.
ReplyDeleteIt occurred to me last week that I imagined her being the same size and development as Kayla and Chloe...but that will only work for a little while longer. As they grow, Ryann won't. I think your description of your image of her being akin to Picasso is quite apt.
But regardless...I will ALWAYS imagine Ryann with Kayla and Chloe. And wish I didn't have to imagine it.