Capture Your Grief 2016-Day 5: The Unspoken

This post is part of Carly Marie's Capture Your Grief.

Normalizing grief is so important and that is why today I am calling upon those who feel brave enough to speak about the nitty gritty side of grief. Share something about your grief journey that you might feel is strange or not common. It might be something you do to remember your children by or maybe it is something you fear about the future.

I try not to think about it, but I know I've had the thoughts already and I know they are in my brain, but I try to shove them to the back. I fear the future. I fear that when Jon and I die, that Oscar, Bella, Tittle and Firefly will die a second death, that they truly will be forgotten. Their memory, their legacy, will either be carried on by or ended by Gus and Lucy. It's the truth of the situation, if my kids don't carry on their siblings, then no one will. And it's not fair. It's not fair to Gus and Lucy that I have this deep hope that they will include their siblings when asked, "Do you have any brothers or sisters?" or include representations of their dead siblings when asked to do family pictures for school. Gus was supposed to do a paper quilt square about himself for school. One of the parts of the square was for him to draw a picture of his family. He did such a good job on it, coming out of his room to check the colors of what we were all wearing so he could get his picture right. And all I could do when he showed it to me was cry because there were only 4 people in the picture and not 8. I told him that I understood if he didn't include Oscar, Bella, Tittle and Firefly, but it made me sad they weren't in the picture, but that it was completely his choice to include them or not. Gus and, when the time comes, Lucy should not be subjected to having to carry their siblings, but how can I be okay with their choice if they don't? I don't want Gus and Lucy to feel as if they HAVE to include them. So, along with the fear of Oscar, Bella, Tittle and Firefly dying a second death, I have fears about how to balance their inclusion so that Gus and Lucy want to include their siblings, but don't feel forced to do so.