"It doesn't get easier, you just learn to carry it"

I love podcasts & audiobooks! They allow me to listen & learn while I clean, bike, or usually-crochet. One of my favorite podcasts is "Everything Happens" by Kate Bowler. On a recent episode, she interviewed Jerry Sittser, who lost his mother, wife, & youngest daughter in a car accident 30 years ago.  He speaks candidly of his grief journey and how as humans we often try-and fail-at making meaning from terrible things that happen to us.  Jerry said that people are looking for answers and that he didn't really come to one until he realized there are no answers.  "I've learned it doesn't get easier, I just learned how to carry it."  As he raised his three surviving children, he continued fun & silly little traditions with them to honor their mother and her memory-even today to his grandchildren.

Much of what Jerry had to say resonated with me as I process my own journey.  In the beginning, when my sister was diagnosed with cancer and then later died from it, I wanted it all to make sense.  I naively believed the trite phrase that "everything happens for a reason."   And the more I tried to understand the more I couldn't understand how a loving God would take my sister from us.  Nothing really made sense about it until I gave up trying to make sense of it and simply remember and talk about her more.  As Annika has grown, we often share stories about Joslin with her. Sometimes Annika does or says something that reminds me of my sister and I explain the bittersweet connection.  There is no making sense of it-there is only carrying of it and I would argue, is made lighter in the sharing of it.  This is one of the reasons I started this blog in the hopes we could share our sibling grief(and really all grief) together.