I haven’t posted anything for a while…the holidays are hard for anyone who has lost a loved one, and our family is no exception. My heart has been breaking more and more every day, as the days grow closer to this coming Saturday, December 2nd. Saturday will be the horrible reminder that 6 years have passed since Morgan was taken from us. It is a hurt that I can never explain – it goes down deep into my very soul.
Being together, and close on Thanksgiving, was nice, and as usual, very hard – all at the same time. Putting on a happy face, while hurting so badly inside is never easy, but I do it, as do others. See, you never “get over” the loss of a child. We set an extra place at the table for Morgan, and then we realized someone else at the table had just lost her husband, about a year ago, as well as her 19-year-old daughter before that, so I told her the empty seat and place setting was for all of them…none are forgotten – as long as they are still in our hearts and minds. She started to cry, and was so happy to have an opportunity to talk about the husband and daughter she had lost.
I really wish that others could understand our pain, but at the same time I would never want them to experience the same loss that we have had in order to understand. No one could ever understand that pain, unless they had experienced that ultimate loss – the loss of their child. I would never wish that upon any other parent!
So many people tell me that I am such a strong person, but in reality I wasn’t given a choice. Losing Morgan was the worst thing that has ever happened to me…a part of me died with her on December 2, 2011. And yet the sun still comes up every morning, and the world continues to turn. So just like other parents who have had a child taken from them, I take a deep breath every morning, and try to put on a smile. I tell myself I am grateful that I have been given the gift of another day, a gift Morgan had stolen from her, a new day in which I can choose to do something good for someone else, in honor of Morgan.
Saturday will be an exceptionally hard day for all of us, and then the fight for justice will continue…because Morgan deserves justice.