Does it get any easier to remember our loss after nine years? Our lives, forever changed, have gone on — without AnnaLeah and Mary. Well, of course, we carry on. Day after day, we adjust to life without them. What else could we do? They weren’t the only people in our lives; life is still full of loving purpose. Yet it would be less than truthful to pretend that our daughters were somehow replaceable — that someone else could fill their shoes, laugh their laugh, fulfill their destiny.
Every death is hard. But when a death is unexpected, violent, and preventable, grief becomes more complicated. Knowing a loved one’s eternal destiny will be far better than anything this earthly life offers can definitely be comforting for those left behind. But when you learn that they could have been spared a horrible death due to a known unreasonable risk — that a truck crash could have been made more survivable — what do you do with the anger and frustration? And when the senseless travesty continues — at the expense of countless victims — the wound seems constantly exposed and harder to heal.
So every year the month of May, for which we had planned a family gathering to celebrate four college graduations & a wedding, brings endless reminders:
- May 4 – the day of our crash & the day AnnaLeah died.
- May 8 – the day Mary died.
- International Bereaved Mothers’ Day (1st Sunday in May)
- Mother’s Day
- May 15 – AnnaLeah’s birthday
- May 18 – first funeral in Midland, Texas (“AnnaLeah & Mary. . . They are where they belong”)
- June 8 – second funeral in Grand Rapids & their burial in Big Rapids, Michigan (“Farewell to Mary & AnnaLeah”)
“AnnaLeah & Mary. . .They are where they belong”. . . funeral sermon on May 18, 2013.
Remembering AnnaLeah & Mary–the joy & the pain–with hope we carry on. Never have I known anything so hard to understand. . . {With Hope, Steven Curtis Chapman}
