"Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle
Everything I do is stitched with its color."

~W.S. Merwin, "Separation"

Missing Ivan

And just when I think it's getting easier... it's not. I just miss him.

D U H !

It's of note, isn't it, that God knows what He's doing?  Remarkable, really. 

When I first found out about Ivan, I thought the task impossible.  I prayed with my wet face buried in the carpet of my living room floor for relief.  I wanted God to take him then.  I thought it would kill me to watch my son die in my own arms.  And then as I prayed, my wails turned to laughter.  A real, deep belly laugh. A thought had been whispered to me and it went like this:  Maybe God knows better than you do, Alana.  I don't know why I thought that was so funny.  I was laughing, I guess, at my own pride.  It's like that was the first moment in my entire life I really understood God is God.  And so God knows better than I do, right?!  Because He's like...God!

It was maybe the first time I felt real humility.  To compare my will to His was laughable.  Just plain ol' country funny.  Like someone had just told me a great joke.  I knew then my will is NOTHING.  The humble surrender felt sublime and brought great relief.  I laughed.  And sobbed. And laughed.  I handed it all over to my loving Heavenly Father in that moment and decided to trust Him because remember... He's like...God!

D U H !

I also knew in that moment that Ivan would be born full term and I would get to meet him.  I just knew.  I'm so thankful my Heavenly Father loves me and all of us enough to let us suffer.  He is good and will turn our sadness to joy, the bitter to sweet if we let Him.

Ivan's Gifts

For this photo of Brandon carrying that little box... I have no words.

Okay, so I'm Alana and I always have words and usually lots of them:  The man in this photo looks like he's being crushed by the actual, albeit unseen, weight of the world and it breaks my heart.

Ivan brought our family so many gifts, I don't know where to start.  Among them, a sweet spirit in our home and especially between me and Brandon.  There is something about standing next to a man and dressing the baby you share for burial that makes it very hard to ever  be unkind to him again.  I still can be jerk, but like I said, it's much harder. ;)

I've been a terrible wife for a lot of our marriage.  I always hated the wife I was, not the husband Brandon was.  It is an ongoing internal struggle for me but I really started to make some good changes a few years ago.  My progress has been slow, almost imperceptible.  But I've never given up.  I think about the last 10 years and it feels good to honestly say I'm a much better wife than I was when we started out. 

Brandon is perfect.  No, really.  That isn't some figure of speech or an exaggeration.  It's explicitly true.  Okay, he leaves socks on the floor and stuff like any other human being but what I mean is:  He's sinless!  He's never said an unkind word to me.  Like, literally not once.  He's never said an unkind word about anyone.  He has not a hint of idleness.  He has no passions to be bridled... no anger, no lusts.  The man doesn't even eat if he's not hungry.  He'll be all, "No, I don't want dessert, I'm not hungry."  Who eats dessert because they're hungry?  I cannot find his fallen man.  I see no flesh mouldering in corruption.  I call him The World's Last Good Man.

All my cruelty towards Brandon in our early years was because of my own dysfunction.  It has taken me a long time to accept the fact that Brandon loves me.  And an even longer time to be at peace with the fact that the way he shows his love and affection is not the way I show my love and affection.  Ivan's gift was dashing to pieces that last bit of viciousness I had yet to shake.

Ivan's gifts have been many. He boxed up love, compassion, gratitude, sweetness, even eternity itself...tied it up with a pretty little bow and left.  He's helping us to become an eternal family.


And since I hope my blog will eventually start to lay off all the death and coffins and stuff, I leave you with an image of what I think Brandon will look like when he is an exalted man, or the angel he already is...  He's totally gonna be Thor!!!

Slightly less God-of-Thunder, maybe.  Lose the hammer but keep the long hair and beard and intensity and glory.  Are you seeing it too?