It’s been 7 months and 3 days since I held my baby and felt her weight on my chest. I’ve read about amputees that feel phantom pain where their missing limb once was and that’s what grief feels like sometimes. My arms will physically ache to have her weight in them. My chest will feel heavy like she’s asleep on it. My fingers can feel her fuzzy head and soft skin. It’s comforting and agonizing all at once. I miss her more than I think I’d miss an arm or a leg.

This week is a tough week. There have been a lot of tears this week. More than there have been in awhile. I mean there are small tears pretty much daily but…this week has been hard. One year ago this week was the week of relapse. Today, one year ago, we were at home with Sophie for the very last night. On August 8th she was readmitted to the hospital with 16oz of pleural fluid next to her left lung. On the 9th, we found out it was filled with cancer and that our doctors didn’t know what to do next. On the 10th, Sophie crashed during her PET Scan and bone marrow biopsy and ended up intubated, sedated, and tied down with a chest tube in the ICU. Between the 11th-15th she got 15 doses of the chemo while under sedation and intubation that would take her independence away. The rest of the month was spent watching her slowly lose things. First it was standing, then sitting up, then being able to grab things, point her fingers, suck on her pacifier, swallow her spit, turn her head, move her limbs on commands, and her voice…all slowly went away.

It all started one year ago today. The beginning of the end.

You can imagine that’s why I’ve been dreading August. For a cancer family, especially one where you lose your child, it’s not just Birthday, diagnosis day, and death day. It’s all of these other dates that are burned into our brains like a brand. Trust me, I’d love to not remember dates, but I’ve always been a dated person. I’ve always had 3 or 4 calendars and….when Sophie was sick I chronicled everything that happened to her everyday in my notebook. Dates and what happened on them matter to me. But this week? This month? I wish I could forget the significance of these dates.

We did something last week that I’ve wanted to do for months but wasn’t ready for. We had our families send us all of the videos they have of Sophie on their phones. We have both watched every video on our two phones so many times that, we have them memorized. So getting this whole album of ‘new’ videos is such a gift. Many, if not most of them, I’ve never seen so it’s like I’m seeing her…a memory of her that I didn’t have but now I do.

How thankful I am for technology. We have friends that lost their daughter to Leukemia 30 years ago….they don’t have videos and pictures just readily available in the palm of their hands. But we do.

The precious videos of healthy Sophie and pre-relapse Sophie are soothing. They make me smile and fill my heart with joy because she’s just so.dang.cute! Everything she did and said was so cute! But the sick videos? The videos of her trying to talk and trying so hard to control her limbs? The ones where she’s crying in therapy because sitting up with 2 therapists assisting her is so frustrating? Videos of her fuzzy little head and sweet smile as she watches her favorite shows? Those precious noises she made the last few months…those dark brown eyes that I love so much…

Those stab me straight in the heart. I want to pick her up off of the screen and hold her to my chest. Watching them….I just can’t believe that was her life. She was stuck in that bed for 130 days. Disabled, frustrated, and unable to stop anything that was happening to her. I’m so thankful for her life but I just can’t believe that was part of it. But I can’t not watch them…they’re my baby. They’re how she looked and was at the end of her life. They’re my sweet Punkin that I cared and advocated for so fiercely. They’re of the part of my heart that I fought for until we left the hospital on January 4th.

And they’re all I have left. So, I watch them and I laugh and cry and close my eyes listening to her voice. I listen to her and Jonathan call me ‘Mama’. Then I hit my knees on the bedroom floor and sob because it’s so very hard, but comforting too. They are proof that she was real. She happened. She was amazing. She fought like hell. And she was so very loved.

In an effort to help my heart this month, I’m doing an August Scripture Challenge with verses showing that #GodisBigger on Sophie’s Facebook page….I’d love for you to join me as I share my heart and what the Lord is showing me this month. I’d also greatly appreciate prayers as this week and month play out. 💜

“Hear my cry, Oh God, listen to my prayer; from the end of the earth I call to you when my heart is overwhelmed. Lead me to the rock that is higher than I, for you have been my refuge, a strong tower against the enemy” Psalm 62:1-3