Adoring Our Families, Cherishing Our Friends

“We spend precious hours fearing the inevitable. It would be wise to use that time adoring our families, cherishing our friends and living our lives.”

― Maya Angelou

In my reminiscent celebrating, I've come across so many pictures that I had forgotten about! They reminded me that one of the most amazing "side-effects" of knowing that time is limited, is that you don't put off until tomorrow what you can do today. So many people, from those in our everyday lives, to those we hadn't heard from in years, made a beautiful effort to come meet Hart. Sometimes I took lots of pictures and lots of times I didn't take any, but here are a few I found!

Hart with his uncle, aunt & cousin
(they also have triplets-not pictured)

It is with our deepest sincerity that we take time to remember Hart, and the way he touched all our lives.Thoughts and prayers always. 

Here are some of the pictures showing loving visits from family and friends.

It's Been a Hart Day's Night

She held her grief behind her eyes like an ocean & when she leaned forward into the day it spilled onto the floor & she wiped at it quickly with her foot & pretended no one had seen.                                                                                  -Brian Andreas

Today is the 10th anniversary of the day Hart died. Traditionally, December 8 is a tough day for our family. We celebrate the time he was with us, but feel the full weight of his absence on this day. Today, I have been very busy and felt pretty okay until about an hour ago. It was then, after everyone else was asleep that I was able to have a few minutes alone with my thoughts. I began feeling a little melancholy and nostalgic. I looked through a bin of Hart memorabilia and found these adorable pictures. Looking at them made me so happy! I love that he was sleeping (or just waking up) with his sweet little arm covering his eyes! It made me want to reach through the photos and hold that precious little baby peeking out from behind his arm.

After I found these treasures, I received the most adorable video message from my good friend and her 2 little boys. The video message made my day complete-and made me cry (tears of joy) ! I think it was the perfect way to end this day!

Dear Hart....Love, Dad

I have a confession. When I read Steadfast Husband's 1st contribution to the Hart 10th Birthday love and memories fest, I (kindly/not kindly) asked him to try again. It was lovely, but felt sterile. After several obnoxious attempts, I finally stumbled onto the words that articulated what I was trying to say.*

*Thank you dear IU creative writing professor who told me that a good piece of writing is well-written, but a great piece of writing has a little piece of your soul in it. Not your "soul", but a piece of you that once put out there, cannot ever be retrieved.

Here's S.H. moving letter and a piece of his beautiful soul!

Dear Hart,
   I have been struggling to write this letter, wanting it to be as eloquent and meaningful as your life was.  My heart knows perfectly what to say, I am just having trouble putting into words the joy and the blessings as I sit here missing you.  I start daydreaming about who you would have grown up to be, how you would have continued to impact the world around you, and what we would have done together.  In the end, the “you” that I do know -has had and continues to have, more impact than my wildest daydreams.  I know you as the shining light that God provided to us, the baby with the power to bring people together, and the hero who defied odds for 24 days in order to touch as many souls as possible.
   I live each day trying to make it better than yesterday. My heart feels full when helping others, and empty when I am unable. My inability to "cure" you or to come up with a solution to give you a long, healthy life was very hard to accept. I had to take a leap of faith, relying on others for information, guidance, and support. I had to trust God, that he had a plan and that He would hold and protect you and our family.

   I have finally come to the realization that you were not here to be taken care of, rather you came to take care of us. I feel like you are still watching over our family. I feel you are with me on a daily basis. I feel like there are moments that you are so acutely with me that I relive moments we had together and experience new moments together. 

   I can’t help but envision you as the ten year old you would be today. There are moments when I see children your age and feel like I've been given a gift. An opportunity to see and enjoy in real life what we missed out on as proud parents, siblings, family, and friends. Whether it is an organized event or just seeing a father and child playing together, I feel those moments on a deep and personal level. 

   You should know as well as anyone, that I love babies. Now my love for babies envelopes my love for you. Having the opportunity to cradle someone else's little one enables me to be with you, my own angel again. These are the most special and meaningful moments for me. I am overcome with an incomparable peace and joy.

   I am blessed each time I experience any one of these moments! I am surrounded by these treasures and nuggets of time with you. I have seen the effect your life has had on others and heard stories of how it continues to do so. I am so proud of you son, for what you have achieved and what I know is yet to come. You have set a high bar for impacting the world and although it is one that I may never reach, I will always enjoy trying. For it is through this journey that I feel closer to you, it is by witnessing your greatness that I am encouraged to be my best.

                                                                             I love you always, 

                                                                                      Dad

Nonnie and Grandad: Going the Extra Mile

Evidently I caused a lot of confusion among family members by requesting "special Hart memories" a few days after the moppets made a similar plea. Fortunately, our family tree is full of good sports, so they all honored both appeals.

In order to fulfill the moppets' request, Steadfast Husband's awesome parents and grandmother drove over an hour to send love from the cemetery where Hart is interred. I was so touched by this; they didn't say that's where they were (I added the location note at the end of the video), but this is exactly the type of thoughtfulness they are famous for! 

And here is the note they sent me in remembrance:

     The thought of Hart being gone for 10 years is hard to process.  He was with us 

     for a short time but touched  all our lives.  Hart's parents endured the pain that 

     no parent wants to feel and did so with dignity and faith.

     God gives us the gift of memory so we can keep Hart forever in our hearts.

 All our love,

  Mom & Dad

Mimi's Musings

One of the reasons I asked my family to contribute their memories of Hart for The Cottage Cheese, was to get various perspectives of love and loss. Snapshots of his impact from the lenses of his siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. As I read my mother's (Mimi) contribution, I was so touched by her raw honesty and enlightened by the glimpse of the loss of Hart from his Mimi's eyes. 

Happy Birthday Hart! We all miss having you here with us but as Dr. Joan’s butterfly metaphor expressed poetically at your memorial service, you were here for a short time but did so much.

Your journey was not easy for you or your Mom, Dad and siblings.  There were decisions, thoughts, and prayers that guided your journey.  When you were about to come into this world no one thought you would make it.  You showed ‘em! Not only did you survive the voyage of birth, you stayed for 24 days to teach us all.  I, of course, was not immediately supportive of seeing this through to the end. Not for selfish reasons, but for the implications of the effect on your parents and siblings.  Data has shown that this can tear families apart and I worried about the long term for your brothers and sisters. 

I didn't live in the moment. When you arrived, everyone was very anxious  as to what to expect. No one, not even the medical staff thought you would be going home. You showed ‘em again.  And I began to watch and learn from you! I have never seen such love. I used to watch your Mom sit on the floor and cuddle you with her eyed closed, me thinking she was exhausted, she is my little girl, but realizing she was trying to savor every bit of time she had with you. Smelling you, feeling your breath, embracing the baby you were; not what was coming. I watched your brothers and sisters hold you, sing to you, play with you in the way they had with each newborn. This family loves babies! I watched your Dad tenderly pick you up when he came home from work to make his memories. 

I learned a lot about love, grace, wonder and prayer. I learned that a tragedy could not only tear apart, but also bring together a family in a way nothing else can.  I know you are very proud of your Mom and Dad, Number 1, 2 & 3 brother and 1&2 sister and tickled by sister number 3.  They are a family of strength, love, charity, and good will. I know you are a part of that family.
I love you Hart, Happy Birthday.

… I always watch for butterflies

Team Hart Birthday Wishes

Hart's Uncle, Aunt and 3 of his cousins sent this awesome birthday video. While I was soliciting written tributes, the Moppets were secretly working on a plan of their own. They arranged lots of surprises for Hart's Birthday including a video of love messages and birthday wishes from our family and put together a beautiful rendition of Happy Birthday with voices of love far and near!

And this was the lovely note I received from Steadfast Husband's brother and his fabulous family! 

Happy Birthday to a little joy that entered the world 10 years ago to grace his parents with God’s glory.  He was too special for us on Earth and God needed him more.  Blessed the family who bore and cared for him.  Their days together will never be forgotten.  Happy Birthday Hart!

Beautiful HeART-break

When I asked my family to send me a memory or tribute to commemorate Hart's 10th birthday, I didn't realized how difficult it would be to read them. (Actually, I didn't even think about that part!) While trying to articulate so much emotion: love, loss, joy and heartache through writing is an enormous challenge- reading them was quite daunting as well.  Words cannot always adequately convey the fullness of the emotion behind them, but reading the words of my family,  I was overwhelmed in the most magnificent way. I started to read my sister's eloquent tribute so many times that I've lost count, it was too "big" to get through. But I finally made it through today and all I have to say is, SISTERS are the BEST! 

Beautiful HeARTbreak. It is really the only way I can describe it. The joy of Hart's birth, the overcoming of so many odds for him to even get here, to live long enough to be born. The fact that he was able to be with us for 24 days was miraculous and crushing. He was here and gone, but left an indelible mark on every life he touched. It was awful and beautiful. It was terrible and glorious. He took us to a thin place. The place where heaven and earth are so close they touch, and when we are still and open our hearts, we can see it. 

I was living in Beijing when my sister found out the little boy she was carrying had trisomy 18. I felt so helpless being so far away. Trying to understand what the situation was, trying to comfort her, trying to navigate different people's reactions and interpretations of the same information. It was overwhelming and my heart ached for her.  My sister is no stranger to life's bumps and bruises and she is gifted with a grace and faith in these times that is inspiring.  She and her husband were able to cling to each other and provide a stable foundation for her five children to navigate. 

When Hart was born, they were joyful, fully loving even though they knew that he wouldn't be here long. They lived out of a space of openness and gratitude, not mourning. From a place of infinite...the more love you give, the more love there is. Remarkable, especially because in this kind of situation it would be easy to close your heart, protect yourself, blame God or anyone else in your path and become hard and bitter. It would be easy, understandable even, to do this. Instead they opened their hearts more and leaned in closer.

I was able to come back for his memorial service. It was sad, yet it was a celebration. It is difficult to describe the feeling in the sanctuary. There was a tangible feeling of holiness. You could feel it in the air, in your bones and in your soul.  It filled every space.  The affirmation that there is so much more, it is all so much bigger than we dare to imagine. 

Hart called us to transformation, to open our hearts and lay the old ways aside.   My heart felt broken, cracked wide open. By God's grace, this precious baby showed us that we could stop spending our lives trying to patch up the cracks and crevices of our broken hearts because the cracks are where the light gets in. By focusing all our efforts on crack repair and management, we miss the light show completely.  In his brief life, Hart showed us that it is going to be okay, that we are loved and cherished and when we focus on that, all the rest falls away. All that remains is love.  Hart taught me in the strictest of terms,  that life is too short to waste it on anything that is not love. 

Honest Beauty: A Love letter

This is the beautiful tribute my stepmother, Gloria, wrote for Hart. It touched me so deeply not only for the content, but also in the "knowing." Gloria has also experienced the devastating loss of a child. Her son, Michael, died when he was in high school and her loving support has meant more than she will ever know.

Hi Erin,

I know you asked for our messages yesterday, but for some reason it has been very difficult for me to put my feelings into words. I can't tell you how many times I have written things for you and torn them up because my words didn't convey what I wanted to say or how I wanted it to come across.

I think of Hart so often with peace, knowing he is with our Heavenly Father. I especially think of him when I drive by your old church and see how big and tall his and all the other trees planted for loved ones lost are now. I think of him every Christmas when your dad and I hang his handprint ornaments on our tree in his memory. I think of him when I drive to my friend’s house in Noblesville and past the cemetery where he is buried. I've even stopped a few times, but haven't been able to find his gravesite. But I didn't want to ask you the location because I was too embarrassed to admit I didn't remember. 

The day of Hart's burial was so heartbreaking and brought back many memories from the loss of my own son. I knew the devastation you and John were feeling. There was nothing any of us could say or do to take away your pain. I knew the hurt you both would feel, walking away, knowing it was the last time you would see his precious face in this life. It was the hardest or should I say strongest testimony to your faith, showing you knew Hart was back in God's care. 

I know through my studies of the Bible, God doesn't make mistakes. He has a plan for all our lives and has since the beginning of time. Throughout the Old and New Testament he or his promise to us for the ultimate reward of Eternity in Heaven with him never changes. We also see how he enlisted Chosen ones and through these most unlikely people worked his miracles. I believe Hart was a Chosen one and through his short life changed all our lives. I know my life changed watching him conquer the odds of making it through birth and by every moment he lived.

Both you and John have given us and your children the greatest example of faith and trust in making the decision, in the beginning, to put Hart's life in God's hands. Not knowing day to day what to expect with his diagnosis, you showed us what a Blessing his life was to you both. By accepting God's will for his life you were prepared to accept whatever challenges his life might bring and to endure the heartache you knew would come saying goodbye. 

I feel so blessed to have experienced God's miracle of Hart. I will never forget him and I too, celebrate his life. 

Love,

Gloria