What's the plan?

I am a planner. In life, I think things through, plan ahead, and make lists. Some people might call this being organized. Others may call it being a control freak. For me, it's just the way I'm wired. It makes me really good at some things, like project management, which I do a lot of at work. And it makes me really lousy at other things, like spontaneity. I am not good at taking life as it comes or coming up with ways to handle the curve balls life throws along the way.

This little curve ball, in particular, was hard to take.

And I mean that in the best possible way.


Liza Jane at 2.5 weeks.


Losing this precious princess was not part of the plan... at least not part of my plan. Watching her grow more sick as the seven short weeks of her life progressed wasn't part of the plan.

Liza Jane at 4 weeks old on Dec. 15, 2010, the day of her heart surgery

Watching as more and more machines took over basic bodily functions for my baby, like breathing, wasn't part of the plan. And being in the hospital in this photo, the day of her heart surgery, sick with a bad cold myself, wasn't how I envisioned the last time I would get to hold her until the day she died, three weeks later.

While these things were hard to experience, what has been just as unexpected (and unsettling) in more recent months has been the nature of the grief process. I know there are models and stages and all kinds of scholarly opinions about grief out there. However, my experience with the death of my child has been that the grief process doesn't follow those models. It is messy. It is out of control. It is unpredictable. Sounds right up my alley, huh?

I'm learning that grief happens in its own way for each of us. We can't box it up and set it aside to deal with later. It ebbs and flows, and the feelings come unannounced when they are ready to come.

For example, I had such a beautiful time reading this blog entry tonight. There are some lovely photos of individuals who have Down syndrome on this blog. And the thing that got me was the picture of a precious young couple on their wedding day. I saw my daughter in that image, and it reminded me of all the times I prayed that she would one day meet a godly mate that she could share her life with. It reminded me that I had hoped she would make it that long, that her heart would respond well to the surgery and we would get to those milestones with her. And there I was, suddenly crying, and angry, and sad, and filled with longing all at once. I was not planning on crying just then.

For a planner like me, this has been hard to get used to. I want to grieve on my own schedule, when I have set aside time to think about Liza. But it just doesn't work that way, and I've found that the more I go with the flow, letting the emotions out as they arise, the better.

I've had to do a lot of grief work to connect with these emotions, to unearth them and find them. And sometimes that has meant sitting down at a specific time with a journal and writing about my feelings, or writing a brutally honest letter to God, or a sweet letter to Liza Jane.

So, the plan is to not have a plan. And if you're a planner like me, you understand just what a significant statement that is.