6 Months Gone
6 months gone.
Half a year.
183 days.
2 seasons.
However you want to put it, it makes my heart sear with pain.
Six months since we’ve held you. Six months since we’ve kissed you.
Six months since we drove away from that hospital without you.
Six months of trying to commit every inch of you to the deepest depths of our memories.
At the beginning of our grieving we would read things like “it doesn’t get easier, it gets different.” And boy is that true.
From the outside looking in it seems that it’s gotten easier, right? In reality, it’s just gotten different. Our tears still come almost daily, but the larger breakdowns feel more spaced out. I can walk past the baby aisle or smile at a pregnancy announcement, yet the smallest things can still set me off when I least expect it.
We had so many plans for this Christmas. Before we knew of Isla’s diagnosis we were planning for a massive family event to celebrate her first Christmas. After her diagnosis we were planning to be surrounded by our families in Scotland, our favorite place and the origin of her name. Enter Covid and exit any further plans we had! Now we are lucky to be with one side of our family - and hope that our months of consistent mask wearing, sanitizing and isolating has worked.
And so we enter Christmas completely differently than we had imagined this time last year. The “my first Christmas” outfits my Grandmom purchased hang unused in our closet, and their purchaser now holds our sweet girl in heaven.
It hit me hardest as we drove down our street to start our journey north. There was no car seat in the back. There were no preciously wrapped presents from Santa. There wasn’t a chunky almost six month old back there starting her first road trip out of Texas.
Our holiday season is clouded with grief and loss, but we enter this second half of our first year without Isla with some hope in our hearts.
We hope that Isla’s life will live on through acts of kindness around this world.
We hope that our foundation will grow and continue to help families like ours as they begin their journey.
We hope that together we can continue to carry our grief well through each day and build a life she would have loved.
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I hope that these songs shine a little bit of light on your day today. Know that you’re not alone in these hard times, and it’s okay to “get it out” in any way that you can. Music is such a great escape, but it’s also one of the few forms of art that can put words to feelings that are hard to describe.