Hello, Dear Friends....
I thought it was about time I updated you on how things are going for us, here at the McVey ranch. It's been 6 days since we had to say goodbye to our sweet baby, Riley. I thought it'd be fun to show you a couple of pictures of him when he was just a baby.
PHOTO DISCLAIMER!: These first two photos were taken 11 years ago -- back in the dark ages in the world of cameras (haha!)......pre-"Laverne", our Nikon D5000 dSLR.......back in the days of our old point and shoot. Bart has had these two pictures sitting on his desk at work for......well, for 11 years now. I hadn't even seen them for almost 2 years (since I got laid off from the same office that he still works in), so I asked him to bring them home so I could scan them into the computer, photoshop them as best I could, and share them with you here. Obviously, they're not very good quality at all, but I wanted you to see them anyway, so you could see why it is that it has felt like we've lost our child this week.
The above photo was me and Riley when Bart and I were engaged and Riley was just 5 days old. Awwww. Wasn't he just precious? How could you not fall in love with that little face. And yes, I'm wearing overalls in that photo. I promise, I was in style at the time. ;)
And this little boy with the chubber belly is Riley at maybe 4-6 weeks old. This was when he was still living with me, just before he came to live with Bart for the 10 months before our wedding.
I show you these pictures today because they make me smile so much. He was our baby in every sense of the word, not having children of our own. I didn't realize how much my entire day, working here at home with him every day, completely included (and often revolved around) him and his schedule. I realize now that I rarely even walked up or down the stairs without him walking right by my side. To say that those first few trips up or down the stairs by myself this past week was tough, would be a huge understatement. This week has been hard. I'm not gonna lie. And it's been a major adjustment -- not just for me, but for Bartley too -- to go through the day without him. If I even moved in my chair too loudly, he would normally pop up ready to see if he needed to follow me somewhere, even if it was just across the room. Even eating meals without him laying right beside me was tough at first. Honestly, everything was tough at first. This week had been heart-breaking and the grief so overwhelming at times. It was hard to be inside without him but hard to go outside without him too.
On the one hand, it was quite difficult to sort of force the creativity in the studio this week, when quite honestly, there were days that my heart just wasn't in it. On the flip side though, I think it was a really good thing to have that work that HAD to be done.....to have something to focus on other than my grief. Plus, most of you know just how therapeutic it is just to play with paper and glue and scissors, etc. Even if I didn't know WHAT to make, going thru the motions of attempting to create SOMEthing helped me.
We're healing a bit more each day and we're so thankful for that. It has helped so much knowing that we're both going thru this together. I would never wish for Bart to hurt for any reason, but it has helped so much to know that he understands exactly what I'm going thru because he's hurting right along with me. Does that make sense?
It also helps tremendously to now be able to see God's hand in the situation....to see how merciful He was with us in the timing of everything. If this had happened just two days earlier for Riley, we were gone all day that Saturday for Mother's Day with family and he would have been home, suffering, alone. He could have been gone by the time we got home. Also, if this had happened next week when we're in Europe (yes, our trip is next week!), my dear sister and brother-in-law would have had to deal with it and we would have had to make that gut-wrenching decision from across the ocean. All of that would have been so much worse than what we've faced. We're very thankful that God's timing was such that we could be here with him to comfort him in those last hours.
I was looking for this picture to share with you because it's always been one of my favorites of my boys....they used to have so. much. fun. playing frisbee together. Honestly, I'm not sure which one loved it more. It was a happy surprise to discover this whole series of frisbee photos.....I couldn't resist sharing them with you all.
One of you dear readers left a comment suggesting that we do something in Riley's honor....something to remind us of him. (Thank you.) It immediately made me think of an azalea we've got planted on the side of the house that was one of the plants that was sent to the funeral home 6 years ago when my Grandpa passed away. We planted that azalea and it blooms like crazy every year now, and always reminds us of Grandpa.
It was with that thought in mind that we had an idea. I told you before of the golden raintree that died in our backyard suddenly last year. We had just had that tree cut down about a week ago and were thinking that we'd go get a redbud tree to plant in it's place. We've since decided to plant that redbud in Riley's honor. We went Wednesday night and picked out the redbud at the nursery, which they will plant after we get back from vacation. We'll call it Riley's Redbud and it will always remind us of our sweet boy. It will be so good for us to watch the tree grow and {hopefully} flourish each year in our backyard. And it felt good to do something proactive toward healing.
We've also discussed, at length, the possibility of another dog at some time in the future. Bart had always said that if anything ever happened to Riley, he'd not want another dog because of all the work involved. However, he'd be the first to tell you that this week, he has completely changed his mind about that. We never would have wanted to have missed out on the last 11 years with our sweet boy because of how much it hurts now, or because of the work involved. We both know that the payoff was FAR greater than the work OR the heartache now. Riley was such a blessing to us that we'd never have wanted to miss out on that. He's been such a tremendous part of our family and we were better for having him in our lives.
Mostly today, I wanted to say thank you to each of you that reached out to us this week. Hundreds of you have been praying for us, have sent your condolences, have reached out to us via blog comments, via twitter, via emails and snail mail. I can't tell you how much I appreciate each of you. That you would reach out to me -- to us -- in such a difficult time has meant the world to me.
I know that I didn't respond to your comments or tweets earlier this week, because it was just so hard to verbalize (without bawling my eyes out) what I was feeling. Poor Bartley.....I've done the "ugly cry" more times than I'd like to remember this week. And I know that he's been struggling with the loss just as much as me, but he's been such a tremendous support for me.
I'd like to also include a special thanks to Bartley for hijacking the blog-o earlier in the week to express our thanks to you......to express what I couldn't at the time. He's been wonderful this week, even in his own pain.
Thank you so much for all of the kind words you had to offer us. For those of you that sent us snail mail -- thank you. Your cards are so sweet. I was wishing for a way to email you my thanks, so hopefully this will suffice. Thank you for caring. Your cards are currently on the kitchen table with a picture of Riley and a vase of gorgeous flowers that my dear friend, Pam, sent us. (Thank you again, Pam.)
Mostly, thank you for remembering our sweet boy.....for not being afraid to talk about him. I think I've learned a few things about grief this week, one being that I think our natural tendency when faced with someone who's grieving is to not know what to say, so perhaps we say nothing at all. We don't bring up the subject because we don't want to cause the grieving person even more pain. However for me, it's felt so much better when people DID bring it up.....when people helped us to remember the great things about our boy and weren't afraid to tell us how sorry they were for our loss.
So thank you, to each of you, for sharing in our pain this week.....for helping to shoulder some of the burden. We are deeply indebted to you. I know that sometimes it may feel like we don't really know each other so how could you possibly help us? But I want you to know that you HAVE helped us. Your support this week has been huge and we're so grateful to you.
I have something fun planned with someone special, that will happen this week here at the blog-o, so I hope you'll check in each day. Five days of fun.....looking forward to it! ;)
Also, we leave for Europe in less than a week now -- EEEE! -- so I'll be sharing the rest of my Countdown projects with you while we're in London and Paris next week.....that way you'll have fun, crafty posts to look forward to each day. I'd hate for you to get bored around here. ;) For those of you that might be wondering, my sister and brother-in-law will still be staying at our house while we're away. (Thank you, Gracie & Chris-o) As you can imagine, we're also very grateful for this trip which was originally intended to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary, but will now, also be a great getaway to help heal our hearts a bit more. We are truly blessed, in spite of our loss.
Our heartfelt thanks to you, dear friends.
much love,
