Silver Linings

I've been kind of quiet around here on Tacen's blog. Not for one particular reason, just life getting in the way and being totally exhausted this pregnancy, really any combination of things!
I've been thinking lately about silver linings. Reasons to find gratitude in my life in spite of things not being how I might have wanted them to be! One those was this past week, Daxon and Iszella have had coughs/colds and Dax had an ear infection. I was thinking about how had we not miscarried we would have had our baby by now and how grateful I am that I'm not worried about keeping our newborn healthy right now while the kids are fighting off these bugs.
Then tonight, Iszella is afraid of monsters. There is not reasoning with her. She thinks there are monsters and you can't tell her there aren't. So we've read the book "Go Away Big Green Monster" several times and we talk about how we can tell the monsters to go away. Iszella was talking about monsters tonight and being scared. We read our book and told them to go away, then we sprayed some special monster spray around her room that they really don't like and we said a prayer. After we finished our prayer I explained how lucky Iszie was that she has a big brother in heaven who knows and loves her and how Tacen would keep her safe! She looked at me with her sweet, innocent eyes and said, "Tacen loves me?" I said Tacen loves you very much sweetheart. She replied, "Tacen will help me feel better?" Me, "yes, he will!" You know I wouldn't wish losing a child on anyone and honestly if I could have Tacen here I would love to, but how many children get to know that they have a special big brother watching out for them? Not a lot! I think that's pretty lucky to know when you are scared or afraid you know that your brother Tacen is in heaven looking out for you too! It's a silver lining to some so hard as losing a child. But I love more than anything talking to our children about Tacen and them knowing how special he is in their lives!

"I Miss Tacen"

Daxon has been talking about Tacen a lot lately. We took some flowers and one of our Tonka trucks down to put on his headstone for Memorial Day. It's a truck a good friend of ours, Brenda, gave us and Daxon loves playing with it. He was not happy that we took it down to the cemetery. I think he was concerned we were leaving it there permanently. We tried our best to explain to him that we would get it back. When we got home Daxon announced, "Mom, we need to go get my yellow truck, because Tacen doesn't like it!"

We were down in Moab over the weekend a couple different times Daxon said things like, "When Tacen comes back from heaven then I'll play with him." He's been talking a lot about Tacen coming back from heaven. It makes me happy to hear him talking about him.
We've talked about how Tacen is his big brother and different things lately and I really feel like he's getting it. So today I went in his room after his nap and found him sitting on his bed laying his head on the back of his bed frame. He looked at me and said, "I miss Tacen!" He had his new yellow truck in his closet and hopped down to get it out. I sat on the floor to help him out. He looked at me and said, "I want Tacen to come back from Heaven." I tried to explain that he was in heaven with Heavenly Father and Jesus. Daxon went on to say, "Maybe I can look out the window and Jesus can drop him off!" At this point my heart about broke. We haven't really had to experience this part of grief up front with our kids. I didn't know what to say. I sat crying feeling so sorry that Daxon was hurting and missing his brother, not understanding where he is or why he can't come back from heaven. It was a sad reminder that losing our sweet Tacen is something that isn't going to go away. It's something that will always be apart of our lives. Not only do I miss him, but my children miss him. They want to have him here and play with him. I'm grateful that Daxon is beginning to know him, but I wish he was here to play with him. I wish he could come back from heaven! I also wish I had all the answers to make this easier!