Strive on.

Dear Baby,

So your first Hanukkah and Christmas have come and gone, and in the blink of an eye you've changed from a tiny, crying infant to a smart, engaging little boy. In the last few weeks you've even started saying "mama" and "dada" and something resembling "fishes" (as in, goldfish crackers) and "I got it" (as in, the remote control).

I think it's time that we have a serious discussion about the circumstances surrounding the first few months of your life, and it's taken me a while to be able to digest it enough to talk to you in way that was, as I designed this blog, about lessons learned and not from a purely emotional place.

Seventy-eight days after you came into our lives my father, your grandfather, died. Seventy-two days later my mother, your grandmother, died. The details need not to be discussed here but to say that they were very sick with cancer for a long time.

Talk about bad timing. Well, perhaps not so bad in a way. It was helpful to have something - you - to force me to get up and move forward every day. It was not as much of a distraction, because, as a thinking person, I knew that I couldn't afford to live in denial. Time with them was limited. Instead you were an addition. A purpose. Something that kept me from crawling into a dark place, setting up a tent and deciding to live there. Trust me, there were times I considered holing up in my bedroom with a truckload of Twinkies and volumes of Sylvia Plath poems.

It is in these moments that one reflects on her own parents' experiences. My own mother's mother was buried the day before my seventh birthday. I have imagined my mom having to go to the funeral then come home and prepare for my party. It is a lesson in how parents are forced to live in the moment; we are keenly aware that you don't get personal days or reprieves from seventh birthdays. You get only one shot at them. So it's a simple decision. You pull yourself up and make pink Barbie cakes or paper machete dump truck decorations and get on with it - whether you feel like it or not.

And you get on with living.

So instead of the Twinkies and poetry idea, I read you stories, held you whenever you threw out your arms, got up with you at night when you were afraid or hungry and gave you an infinite amount of kisses. I haven't regretted a second of it, and no doubt it is exactly what your grandparents would have wanted.

But I won't downplay this. I mean, death is a big deal, and losing your parents...well, it probably ranks up there among the most jarring experiences we have in this world. How do we cope?

Not to get all philosophical on you (and know that I don't subscribe to any specific religion at this point in my life), but I hope someday that you will read about the Buddha and his attempts to make sense of the universal experiences of suffering and death. I find it comforting. As he laid on his deathbed he looked around at his grieving disciples and reminded them that the reality is all things decay and die, it is natural to feel sadness, and it's imperative they strive on in their own personal journeys.

I like that. Grieve. Accept. Strive on.

Don't let the pain of loss ever hold you back from making the most out of your life. The nature of life and death is not something we can control; therefore, we are not meant to spend our time worrying about our fate (or anyone else's, for that matter). We can only learn from it and respect it - and ultimately value the present so much more profoundly.

Know that that peace is not found in the dark hole, it is found in the light. It is found in the hugs and kisses and in the little wonderful moments with those who are alive and beside you right now.

I love you.

Mommy