How do we navigate through this sorrow?

The sun is shinning, the sky is blue, the temperature is a pleasant 15C (60F). A perfect day. This seems both merciful and cruel. How can the world continue to turn? How can the birds still sing? How can my children still laugh? When such a tragic loss has hit us?

Of course I know that tragedy hits someone everyday. Even as we read this post, someone has passed away somewhere, in fact many someones and the grief of their families is no less than ours. I barely watch the news because it is so depressing- people doing horrid things, devastation, hurt, pain careening across the television screen. But they are so far away. The news anesthetizes us in its commonality. Until the horror comes near. Until the loss hits my family, my friends, me. Then I can't turn away my ears or close my eyes, turn my mind to other things or stop the weeping of my heart. My thoughts are with John and Jenn constantly and I wonder how we can ever recover from this. And yet even as I talk with them, there is life in their voices, pain and heartache, but also laughter, also love, also resilience and faithfulness and connectedness.

We are all so thankful for the sea of people who have expressed their grief along with us in our loss. Prayers and love are being sent up from homes all over the globe- across Canada and the United States as well as throughout the world. It is comforting to know that so many have taken this personally and are carrying our sorrow with us. Of course none of us are affected so deeply as John and Jenn. It is for them that our hearts cry out most of all.

Jenn keeps telling me to hug my children. Perhaps the greatest gift that comes out of tragedy is the way people come together, the way we look at each other with renewed love, the way we cling to those who are close to us. We can't offer much in the way of healing, but we can offer togetherness in our sorrow and shared hope in the things that still bring beauty in the midst of pain. If the sun is shinning here, it is beaming in heaven, if the temperature is nice, it is glorious in heaven. These testimonies to life are but a taste of realities in heaven, where Gordon is, enjoying and relishing in the beauty and mysteries and excellence of perfection. We must grieve and mourn and cry and express our communal and personal pain, but we must also breathe deeply of the big and small beauties that surround us.

I don't have much to offer, but I offer here my thoughts, my life, my joys and my tears. May we be brought together in our common love and celebration of both those who are living and of those who have gone on before us.

Jenn, I wish you could hug Ivan and Dominique along with me right now, but we will be there shortly. In the meantime, I hope their pictures and videos warm your heart and bring light to your day. Thinking of you always. your sister twice over, angela


I am so thankful for this little contraption I came up with a week ago. I call it our "8 hour wonder". Dominique was establishing a new sleep pattern, brief, short periods all day and night. I know it's because she is not on her stomach. One night I thought of laying something on her stomach for comfort- she slept all night. But I was worried about it being too heavy or sliding up to her neck or over her face, so I made our "8 hour wonder" with burp cloths, some rice and an old sock. It's light, wraps under her to stay in place and gives her the comfort she needs to sleep soundly. This was my little bit of mercy. Grieving is so tiring. It's like I'm dragging all day- even with a full night of sleep.


On a humorous note, here is Dominique in Andrew's dress. If it gives you some comfort Andrew, mom gave this to me for Ivan! I don't think she put it on you though, just as I didn't put it on Ivan. A friend of mom's made this for Andrew when he was a baby. How nice of her. Some people have such funny ideas. But it does look great on Dominique.