One Month

Has it really only been a month?  It seems like a lifetime has passed since I have heard Trent's voice, touched his skin, woken up next to him.

Zach started out the day by flying the flag at half mast in honor of Trent.  His last words to me before he headed out the door were, "Mom please try to have a good day."  He is so sweet and knew that today was likely to be a tough one.

Before I got dressed I knelt to pray for help for this day specifically.  I felt impressed to call a woman I have never met who is in a similar situation as myself.  We ended up talking for almost three hours.  She was great and so honest with me.  I found I could relate to her and the things she shared very easily.

I prayed again that I could find things to occupy my time and my mind so I could make it through the day and felt that I should go see a woman in our ward who has also recently lost her husband.  I grabbed Jonny and we left right then.  We had a nice little walk up to her house and ended up spending the afternoon talking with her and playing with her grandchildren.  It felt so good!  I was talking and laughing almost like I did before.  Of course, I was crying too.  But it still felt good.  I think I am going to try doing some indexing for genealogy to keep myself busy and she is going to teach me how.

We decided not to count how much time since Trent's passing.  Instead we are going to count how much closer we are to being with Trent again.  So we headed to the store and all picked a balloon, attached a note, and went to the cemetery to celebrate being one month closer.

Jarom, Zach, Megan, Jonny, and Mallory getting ready to let go!

Jonny let go of his balloon early so I only got  five balloons in the shot.

Mallory's balloon got stuck in a tree.  Yes, tears were shed.  I told her that it was okay because Daddy was probably sitting right next to her when she wrote it.  She didn't think so because Megan was sitting there.  Oh well, I know he was there.

Zach's balloon just didn't have enough 'umpff' to lift off.  We tried several times.  Yes, there were more tears.   I told  Zach the same thing I told Mallory.  My heart was breaking for him!  Finally he taped the note to the balloon and took off the string.  That did it!  It finally rose, slowly but surely, into the sky.

We finished off the night with shakes from McDonald's and a car full of teenage boys hooting at us.  Megan was sure they were after me but I am pretty sure they were just being nerds.  She opened her window and yelled at them, then they were especially interested!

The last few days have been pretty hard.  There have been some good moments but those seem to get overshadowed by extreme grief.  I made the mistake Wednesday night of going to RS to hear a man speak about his near death experience.  I thought there might be a nugget of hope in there somewhere that was just for me.  Instead I saw horrible hospital pictures that were extremely hard to see and ended up jumping up and running out as soon as he said 'Amen'.  I ran to my friend's car and as soon as we had both slammed our doors I burst into tears.  That was a hard night.

Thursday morning I was miserable so I prayed for help.  The answer came very clearly to go to the temple.  So I did.  It was beautiful at first and I felt that Trent was near me.  By the time I got to the Celestial Room I was sobbing uncontrollably and it lasted for about twenty minutes.  There was another woman crying and she came over to me and just squeezed my hand and said, "Hang on, just hang on...it will be okay."  I hugged her and whispered, "When?"  She just repeated, "Hang on."

I think Zach is getting tired of hearing me sob every night.  I can't help it though.  Every time I kneel down to pray the tears just come.  People have said that the pain never goes away you just deal with it.  I can't imagine living the rest of my life in this kind of pain.  But I do find hope in being one month closer.