My Heart Is Full

(Disclaimer: Reading this post may require the use of Kleenex. More than one).

My heart is so, so full.

I just returned from a weekend that was something beyond the words I am going to use to describe it. I’m not sure I even will be able to describe what this past weekend was, but I shall try!

Those four words in the title say it all, but there is so much more I hope I can convey.

There is a great deal of background “stuff” that led to this weekend, but I am not going to write about all that because really, it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of it all. All that matters is that I ended up in DC at a conference for parents who have experienced the death of a child, teaching a workshop to bereaved parents on ways to create a lasting legacy and keep their child’s memory alive. While the workshop is what started it all, that doesn’t matter to this story either.

What does matter is that I had one of the most extraordinary and poignant and beautiful and downright gut-wrenching experiences of my life. One would think that in my work, my heart would be able to handle quite a lot. It can and it does. I have written before about the families and stories I sometimes take home with me at the end of the day.

My heart has certainly been full before, but never like this.

I went to this conference alone, which was a first for me. WAY out of my comfort zone! I was uncertain about what I would do at such a conference by myself. I worried and wondered if this group would respond in a positive way to the workshop I taught. As the time grew close, my panic also grew. I was flying across the country to DC, and I only knew four people who were going—one of my coworker’s parents and a couple I have worked with on one of Share’s memorial events—and I really didn’t know them all that well. In the few days leading up to the trip, I was so uneasy—not only had I never done anything like this by myself, but my travel arrangements were kind of a disaster, and I had an upset stomach for 3 days. I wished I had someone to go with me, but I convinced myself it would be an interesting adventure. I stocked my suitcase with a new journal, yarn for a crochet project, books and my bathing suit. I put on my Susie Sunshine hat and began to embrace the idea of some quiet time by myself.

 I truly could never have imagined what the weekend would be like. I did not imagine just how deeply I would be moved. I met so many incredible and downright courageous people who shared so many stories of their beloved children with me. It was quite humbling, really, that complete strangers would open their broken hearts and bare their raw souls in the amazing and beautiful and touching ways they did. While I had envisioned spending evenings in my room at the Dulles Hilton crocheting and reading, instead I spent them relaxing on the outdoor patio in the company of a group of people I now can’t imagine not having crossed paths with. One couple lives only 2 miles from me! We all laughed and cried for hours each night over glasses of wine and plates of half price appetizers.

While there was lots of laughter throughout the weekend, there was also an equal number of tearful, heart-clenching moments when the stories I heard and the looks on the faces of the brave souls who told  the stories just about undid me.

Like the mom whose athletic, 22 year old son collapsed while walking across his college campus and died a few hours later because of an undiagnosed heart defect.

Or, the mom whose daughter died in a car accident minutes after she was talking to her on the phone.

Or the mom whose daughter was hit by a stray bullet after some idiot asshole fired a gun into the air at a fireworks show.

Or the mom of a 12 year old boy who was swept away and drowned in a freak flash flood in their suburban neighborhood after he and his sister went out to happily play in the rain on a warm fall day.

Or the parents of a 15 year old boy with the most charming smile who died in a car accident after another 15 year old’s father let her take the car to drive her friends to breakfast.

The “ors” could go on and on and on and pile up one on top of another.

By Saturday night, my heart was so full there was absolutely NO possible way it could hold anything else. Not even one little drop. It was more than full…it was overflowing. All of the stories I had been so honored to hear, all of the photos of such cute and beautiful and delightful and precious children of all ages with twinkling eyes and crooked smiles who had been ripped away from their parents and all who loved them was almost more than I could bear. By the time my new friends and I gathered on the patio that night, the mood was lighthearted as one of the speakers earlier that day had challenged everyone to tell their companions at least one funny story about their child. As they all shared, I laughed until I cried, and this quote came to mind:

This conference--the speakers, the parents who attended—they were all perfect examples of that quote.

I left DC Sunday morning feeling exhausted to the core of my being. As I stood outside the hotel with my suitcase waiting for the shuttle to take me to the airport, I tried to clear my mind and not think about how the weekend had not turned out in any way I had imagined just days before when I had a knot in my stomach the size of my head. This will sound terrible, but as I waited for the shuttle, I was thankful that no one I met in the previous few days was waiting there with me. We had all hugged and said our goodbyes the night before, and I am pretty sure I could not have handled saying goodbye again at that moment.

My suitcase was stuffed full thanks to all of the books I bought at the bookstore, and my heart was stuffed full with all of the love and aches it could possibly hold. To say my heart was full is a huge understatement.

As the plane took me away from DC, I tried to read, I tried to sleep, but it was the bouncy sort of flight that the nervous flier I am HATES, and I couldn’t relax. Thankfully, it was short, not much over an hour. I landed safely in Indy, (don’t ask why I flew into and out of Indy when I live 4 hours away in St. Louis…I’m an idiot, I shall just leave it at that!)

Since I am an idiot who had to fly in and out of Indy, I decided to stop and spend the rest of the day and night with my mother in law since she lives only an hour or so from there. I should never have thought or said that my heart couldn’t hold anything else. Because it could, and it did.

Stay tuned for My Heart is Full, Part 2.