words failing… again.

Hey, y’all! Happy end of October! I’ve totally loved/been eaten alive by this month’s blogging challenge.

I had some plans today to write a piece on body image, because I have some things going on in my head about it, and pretty much any time I write anything on body image, it blows up because WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT IT.

But then my family got some tremendously sad news last night and I kind of lost my words again.

My father-in-law and his wife were on the way to pick up their 11-year-old daughter, and they got t-boned, and now he’s gone. She was injured as well, and initially, nobody knew how badly. (It sounds like she will be okay, physically.)

Last night when I told the kids, Katherine said (with classic Katherine attitude), “I’m jealous of Grandpa Jim. He gets to be all happy in heaven with JESUS.” I laughed and agreed, but explained, “We’re not sad for Grandpa Jim. We’re sad for the people he left behind. Like Nanny Edith and Amanda. And us.”

The grief hasn’t hit yet. They live a couple thousand miles away, so it feels remote and unreal right now. My current reactions are divided between a sudden realization of the brevity of life and a lot of logistical questions that feel really crass to ask right now, and can’t be answered yet anyway. I certainly can’t find any meaningful words. I’m tempted to eulogize him on my blog, but that seems kind of cheap.

Anyway, I’ll totally write the other piece… eventually. But not today. Today, I will just sit and count it a win that I finished school with the kids, and I will pray for Grandpa Jim’s wife and daughter and family as we wait for answers to all of my (truly inconsequential) questions. It feels like a flat and sad ending to a month filled with a lot of work, but I can’t just leave day 31 blank. (I mean, I could, and it wouldn’t be a big deal. But I won’t, because I double-dog-dared myself to finish it a month ago.)

So… that’s not a real blog post. Thanks for reading it anyway. Please pray for Edith’s continued recovery and her and Amanda’s grief, along with that of the rest of the people around him—us included.

This post is part of a 31-day series called “Grace in Failure.” Other posts from the series can be found here.

Published by robininalaska

Robin Chapman is a part-time writer, editor, and birth photographer and a full-time imperfect mama, wife, Jesus follower, and normalizer of failure. She’s trying hard to learn how to do this motherhood thing in a way that doesn’t land the whole family in intensive therapy. She has a heart for helping other mamas buried in the little years with hope, humor, and solidarity. You can find her hiding out in the bathroom with an iced dirty chai, writing and editing and making spreadsheets for KindredMom.com where she is a cheerleader for mamas, or online looking for grace in her mundane and weird life. She lives in Fairbanks, Alaska with her four delightful (crazy) kids—some homeschooled, some public schooled, some too young for school at all—and her ridiculously good looking husband, Andrew. View more posts