To Be Known

One of my very dearest friends has told me before, and she would know, that built into our souls is the desire to be known. I'm feeling that rather intensely lately....I'll blame it on the holidays.

I'm pretty checked out in general. Our schedule is busy and I think I keep it that way mostly because I don't know what else to do. Rather than take charge I have a tenancy to let things fall where they will, I'm not sure what would be better, but I lean toward the previous.

It brought us safely to Thanksgiving which is possibly becoming my least favorite holiday. We celebrated it twice this year with both sides of the family and I managed to land a 24-hour flu on the first one, so even the food was spoiled. My sub-conscience also remembers well the most awful Thanksgiving that was the first holiday after Ezra died and I could not even begin to think about how to be thankful for anything.

What brings down the mood of the festivities for me is the idea of being thankful, and knowing for damn sure what I am not thankful for, and for all the naivety that people are privileged to float along in. I try to focus on the goodness, Abe, Malachi, Josiah and Hazel, my parents and brothers and their families, for jobs and houses and food, for vehicles and crafts. But it all seems to get trumped when I imagine what life would be like with Ezra, and I feel overwhelmed by that side of the story, that four years later it is still bigger than my gratitude.

It's slightly impacted this year. I am in a state of mourning over the near sure end to my childbearing. I remember when Malachi was a baby thinking I could have many children, that I would be a good mother to a big family, that I could handle it. But reality is that at some point it will draw to an end, and what I have felt more passionately about than anything else in life so far will change. Both my sister-in-laws and several friends are pregnant with their 4th baby, another friend is naming her baby Ezra, and I think I just really can't handle it all so gracefully. I suck it up and be strong because that is what I am good at, and then I get to a place where I can cry and suffer the fact that this is all happening at once. I can't keep having babies trying to catch up with the one that I lost. We will always be one short.

Sometimes 4 years seems like an eternity ago, and yesterday all that the same time. When I can't compose myself because I miss him still, I try so hard to stop because it seems like this is getting old, to be missing him. I think the justification for me is in that fact that as we move along in life I'm also mourning all the times and places we don't get to go and spend with him, and it all seems like a good reason to be a little less than thankful.