Honor

Capture Your Grief, Day 11

How do I honor you?  Especially on important dates?  I’d like to think I honor you everyday when I say your name, speak to you in my heart, look at your picture, and display the artwork your brothers and sisters have made for you. 

I honor you on the feast days of your namesakes...September 5 - St. Teresa of Calcutta; October 1 - St. Therese of Lisieux; October 15 - St. Teresa of Ávila.  Usually, I will bring flowers to your grave on these days. This year, I was even able to go to mass.

Of course, there will be the opportunity to honor you for the holidays. This will be year two of remembering you for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter.  It was so hard last year. We made Christmas ornaments for you with hearts, roses, and your handprints and footprints.  We even made a special tree, the “Teresa Tree,” decorated with butterflies.  I imagine we will do the same this year. 

For your first birthday, we took your siblings out for gourmet ice cream, brought you flowers and a balloon, and celebrated mass in our home. That is a tradition I would like to keep. 

Last year we participated in a race in your honor, but we just couldn’t do it this year. Some things are just too hard. Take, for example, tonight’s Wave of Light.  

This is my second one, and it didn’t really bring me comfort. Overall, I felt extremely sad. I felt sad lighting a candle for you. I felt sad that you were not here. I felt sad that I have to be part of this group.  And in my grief, after lighting a candle for you, I spent the majority of the evening passed out in bed with your little brother, not even wanting to be near the light, fighting back tears all evening and imagining I was holding you, too.  

Is that wrong?  Because I feel guilty.  And extremely angry. Sometimes I just want to run away from reality.  I would rather just having you here with me.

I do strive to honor you, and I want to do so with my life. So please forgive me when it becomes just a little too hard and burdensome.  It doesn’t make me love you any less.  

 “It is love alone that gives worth to all things.”  (St. Teresa of Ávila)