Princess Alexa Memories

My son just came home from a dance and was looking handsome, feeling confident and really happy. I watched him while he told me all about his night and then lip synced his way around my room.

I was struck by the sheer joy I was feeling inside watching this newly formed young man enjoy life. I remember him being just a small boy.

In that moment, I was hit with the realization that I am living IN the moments I never got with Alexa. I am experiencing his teenage years and witnessing the transformation from child to adult.

I know to my core how valuable this moment is.

I cried and laughed and hugged him with everything in me.

This is my child. I am so thankful to get to see him grow up. To be a mother is the most wonderful gift in life.

Yesterday I remembered that Alexa used to call shorts “quite short pants”. She would say things like: “I want to wear my Ariel shirt and my quite short pants.” It made me smile. She was so funny.

An unfortunate, yet darkly humorous title of a podcast I was researching for work. I love you, my funny little human.

Today I am standing in line and looking at a package of Dots candy. I reach for my phone to text my son about them when it hits me that he didn’t eat them with me. Alexa did. And suddenly a stop at the grocery store hits me so hard I can barely stand up straight. How have I survived living without my child? HOW?

Because I have no choice. And that is it. I have no choice. So I live. Without her. Always. Every day. Every minute. And am thankful for the love I have in my life that propels me forward when I want to crawl in a hole and cry.

This month always has mixed emotions for me. She would be 15 on the 29th. A blooming teenager! So exciting. I think of her every day. Some more than others. And always thankful that I carry her with me always. This talk is the best one I’ve heard on what grief is and how we move forward. I am incredibly happy with my new thread of life.

We don't "move on" from grief. We move forward with it In a talk that's by turns heartbreaking and hilarious, writer and podcaster Nora McInerny shares her hard-earned wisdom about life and death. Her candid approach to something that will, let's face it, affect us all, is as liberating as it is gut-wrenching. Most powerfully, she encourages us to shift...

I am absolutely in awe of the hearts of those who feel deeply and love intensely. My close friend Heidi took the picture I posted of me and Alexa and painted it for me!!!! It is not only the most incredible piece of art I’ve ever seen, it is perfectly us. It’s perfectly her! It glows with all heart and fire. I LOVE IT! And it is now the centerpiece of my home. Thank you so much for sharing your talent and love to a friend who I told I can never repay, so I’ll just love her and that has to be enough. Haha.

These are memories from 10 years ago delivered to my inbox on an otherwise meaningless day...but I look at these pictures and a flood of emotion runs over me. LAUGHTER: I love my son’s little gap toothed smile and I can hear his toddler, snorty laugh. SURPRISE: I can’t believe I forgot he used to suck his thumb. I can hear its little smack as he took it out to grab a “dar dar” (popsicle) clutching his “Mimi” (Alexa’s blanket he commandeered). LOVE OF FRIENDSHIP: that little girl is not so little anymore...a sister of a fellow cancer friend we loved and lost. I can hear her giggles chasing after him as he ran all over the place. Most of all PRIDE. Look at my eyes. Those that know me well can see it. I can recognize it in myself. This was a short 6 months after Alexa died. Our first Holiday season without her. I am in desperate grief, yet I am holding my baby boy next to a tree I managed to put up for him and smiling with him. I have scraped and clawed and forged my way through life and have found much happiness and beauty. For those who are in the beginnings of grief...it IS hard. It IS heartbreaking. It IS painful. It IS life altering. But is IS livable. And it IS a thing of beauty to have loved so deeply.

This is a candid shot of Alexa and me playing around together. As my family continues to grow and our children are older, we are starting to see similarities in all of their personalities to our own. Alexa was my little mini-me. We shared a heart. Seeing this picture takes me right back to that space in time when I had all I wanted in my arms. Life is so beautiful and I continue to live it as fully as I can, but there are moments when I am painfully and beautifully reminded that I was the mother of this little ball of sunshine and I miss that. This dress is framed in my house now. Stains and tears and all..evidence of a short four years of life lived well.

This is the chandelier from “her” room in the house we bought after her life. Zack gave it to me when he changed up the look and I finally got around to making it my project. I stripped out all the electrical work and repurposed it into a candle-lier in my bathroom. I love how it turned out. Pictures don’t do it justice. Today is her 14 1/2 birthday. As I was working on this while watching This Is Us, I was moved to tears. I wonder what she would look like and what she would love. I wonder what her hugs would feel like and how her voice would sound. I miss her ... and I am missing so much of life today. The sacrifices I’ve come to bear are taking a toll, but that little girl will always be one of the lights of my life. This is for you, my girl.

These made me think of her today.

Alexa called strawberries "star babies". I can never see one now without smiling and hearing her cute voice asking for "star babies" in a bowl.