Today’s challenge, right from the original post, was to write about perspective. Hmmmmm...pretty vague topic and one that took me a long time to really think about what to write about. There’s so many facets to this word, this theme. In relation to where life was 9 years ago I had wondered about writing about life from Cole’s perspective but I wasn’t sure I could emotionally bring myself to do that. I thought about writing about the topic of what our journey was like from the perspective of others in our lives. Recently I met with two other TTTS moms for supper. They are two of my ‘oldest’ local TTTS friends and initially I only had ‘loss’ friends so they have many similar ‘perspectives’. We talked about our families that day and I wondered out loud something that I’ve always been curious about….what was it like to be our families and our friends during our loss journeys. I asked them if they had ever wondered or even asked what it was like for our moms and dads to get that awful phone call. Or our siblings. Or our friends. In my case, I often have wondered what the Christmas gathering that happened the day we lost Cole was like. How hard was it for Josh and Marjan to show up there, with my other two boys but without my parents, who’d been called and chose to come to the hospital instead of going to family Christmas, and tell all my aunts, uncles, cousins etc that one of our twins had died. It’s an interesting perspective….but its not mine and I really can’t write about something I’ve never experienced.
So what do I write about, how do I focus on this theme of perspective when I am in the midst of this heartache of memories and emotions. And so I decided to break and take these photos and then use them to write about two opposite but so connected perspectives….looking down
or looking up….
In these photos I think looking down gives a prettier picture, a more defined picture. And perhaps that’s what it’s really about. That after the fact, that when the time comes that you can look at things from a more complete place, from a better angle, you can see the whole picture better. Your perspective is completely different when you are out of the situation, out of the chaos.
But that’s not how life works. We don’t get to live the forever after before we’ve lived the here and now.
When you are in the thick of it, you are like my photo. You are looking up and you can’t see the top. You can’t see what the end will be and you often can’t see for the chaos that’s in your way. You may see glimmers of light, of hope but really you have no choice but to live in the moment and pray for the whole picture to become clear.
In the chaos of 9 years ago I couldn’t imagine that my life would be where it is now. I also couldn’t have foreseen the outcome, couldn’t have imagined that in 24 hours I would learn that I wasn’t going to bring two little boys home from the hospital together. But I could see glimmers of light and I had hope.
The next day those branches covered that hope, the light was gone and I was unable to imagine my life any other way but in darkness and devastation. But those lights, that hope...it was still there. I just had to push the branches aside to find it.
And now I can stand back and see the whole picture…
I can see that amazing things happened because I took this journey, that despite the heartache, the devastation, the sadness and the struggles to overcome it, it didn’t just change me for the better, it impacted people all over the world. I can see that this journey was never just mine to take. I took my family, most especially those two special little boys, with me but I met and impacted so many other families along the way and shared my perspective on life with them.
If I could have only seen the view from the top, I would have missed the journey of the heart from the bottom. If I could have only seen the view from the bottom I would have been much too scared to find my way through it. And if I could have only seen the whole picture I might have thought it was a easy, it was pretty...that it didn’t take blood, sweat and oh so many tears to get to where I am today.
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