Taking Stock

Continuing to build a life and launch maturing children is hard enough following the loss of one's parents, but following the loss of our youngest son, it can be darn near impossible sometimes. As much as we enjoy Jameses company and his adjustment to our family, sometimes his presence simply underscores Daniel's absence. He is adjusting and normalizing to our home and family, and actually doing well with the appropriate amounts of outbursts and annoyances found at his age and situation, and as we start to care for him and the ties which bind him to our hearts begin to grow, we wonder why God could not have allowed Daniel to remain here, and found a way to add James.
This being the time of year in which Dad departed and then Daniel just after, also underscores what time of year this is. I know, we cry more, think of them both more, and mull over ways we could create additional remembrances of them. The tough part is remembering to live your own life, as it surely ticks away, while remembering theirs as well.
Today I thought of my Dad a great deal. We visited with friends from Iran. My Dad, among many other interesting things about him, learned to speak, write and read Farsi (Persian) at Princeton University. I know he would be pleased that I recognize that there are not only bad people all over the planet, but good people from each nation as well. As we visited with our Iranian friends today, who have also experienced deep losses in the past few years, I wondered how we could be so alike in our losses and sharing even though we had grown up in vastly different countries, languages and cultures. Daniel would have enjoyed visiting them too, especially with all the fruit they had.
In conclusion, both Daniel and Dad left broad and deep legacies for us to remember, and try to do justice to, in some way. They each made every moment of their lives count.... and I think sometimes that I spend too much time in grief and sometimes, in guilt as well. Sometimes I just wish I had spent more time with each of them and been more visible, more present etc. Each were independent though, and enjoyed a certain amount of solitude, and so my changing my own choices even then, would have been difficult.