Thanksgiving

11.28.13
 
     We had made plans to meet my parents in Austin for the Thanksgiving holiday. We knew that the families in Houston would be busy with Sir William, so we had made our usual plans of attending the University of Texas football game and spending family time together. Chad and Jenny were invited to the game and decided to join us for Thanksgiving dinner too!
      Alex and I got there late Wednesday night, and Thursday morning was spent getting all the food ready for our big meal. Chad and Jenny arrived around 11, and we decided to go ahead and eat our grub so we could get to the stadium early.
      My Dad always blesses the meals when we're in their house. He prayed a prayer of thanks, and somewhere nestled in the middle of it he said, "And thank you for baby Kaitlyn and all she's taught us about You." Yeah that's about all I needed to start crying again.
      Holidays are hard. I really didn't understand before I started living them. When we went to one of our first group counseling sessions, the leader had said that holidays are really hard and Alex and I both thought, "Why? Especially for us, its not like we had our child and then lost them... We didn't make memories with Kaitlyn over Christmas or New Years or Thanksgiving... Why should holidays be any harder than any other day?" Well, we were wrong. Thanksgiving was hard. Halloween was hard, but that one I can kind of understand because there are so many kids out and about on Halloween.
       We loaded up in my Mom's car and headed down to the stadium. We always stop by the band hall and hear the drums warm up on our way down from the parking garage, and this day I stopped by and said hi to a friend of mine from college. Natalie and I have crossed paths a couple of times, but we first met when I was a sophomore in college and still living in the dorms. She lived down the hall from me, and I just remember eating with her and some of our other friends in the cafeteria when she talked about her pacemaker, Paco. Funny that my first job out of college was selling and troubleshooting pacemakers! I met Natalie's mom at my home hospital out of pure coincidence, and we have all three been keeping in touch over the past few years. Anyways, I went and hugged on Natalie because she's always hanging around the band hall with all the drumline alumni. She hugged on me and expressed her sympathies for our loss. I was okay at the moment and didn't feel like I needed to cry, but I thanked her for her thoughts and prayers.
      Off we went down to the stadium. The game turned out rather well (Go Horns), but at different points during the game I needed to sit down. Grief is a really weird beast in that it can just sneak up on you when you'd least expect it. I was sitting in a stadium filled with over 100,000 people and I still felt more alone than anything. I missed Kaitlyn. I wasn't suppose to be at this game, I was suppose to be at home with my baby girl. I think Alex felt it, too, because we kept sitting down at the same times. I squeezed on his hand and told him I was sad. You would think that being at a loud football game would be the perfect distraction for us to not be sad and to not be missing Kaitlyn that badly, but we did. I wanted to hold her sweet little hands and see her little toes (she totally had Alex's toes, and they were gorgeous). I wanted to be able to play with her dark, thick hair that I can claim as my own. I just missed her, plain and simple.
    In the midst of all that, I was able to muster out my Thanksgiving thankful post for facebook:

Day 28: I am thankful for Kaitlyn's life. I am thankful that God allowed us to get pregnant when we did because I got to have a little buddy during his final deployment. I am thankful that God chose us to share His glory. I am thankful that we live in an age where her story has literally traveled the globe and I have received messages from strangers about how our daughter changed their lives. 
       Love your kiddos today, even if they don't eat their turkey and head straight for the dessert. Hug your families even if they annoy the crap out of you. Live (and love) like tomorrow is not promised.