Today would have been Ian’s 40th birthday. We are celebrating with a trip to the Krabi coast and in some mysterious way I feel his delight in this place, in our being here right now.
He’s been gone from us nearly two and a half years, but even still I have to remind myself at times that he’s not in the hospital anymore, that there’s no more hope of him ever coming home to us on this life’s shore. I’m glad he no longer has the endless loop of blood draws and fevers and biopsies to deal with. We don’t miss watching him suffer, that’s for sure, but Lord knows how much we miss that precious man in our lives.
Our family will never be the same without his spontaneous songs and silliness and tickle wrestling matches. I miss being challenged and inspired daily by his passion for learning and growing on every level- spiritually, intellectually, relationally, artistically and physically. He had this beautiful mix of self-security and maturity combined with a childlike innocence and awkward honesty. I loved his passion for connecting deeply with God and others and his sharp prophetic insight into people and relationships. I miss those mysterious rose colored glasses through which he seemed to always view me, such a continual and shocking illustration of Divine grace. There are just so many things to love about him.
It’s crazy how one person can become so deeply woven into another and how deep those invisible threads pull at their loss. Those threads of grief and joy and a million little memories are still very much tangled into every day, every hour, nearly every breath of my life. I feel like I’m always processing in the background, always maneuvering through a trigger of one thing or another that circles me back to Ian, to loss, and to the long path of healing.
Still, we are moving on, we are finding our way. A year ago we moved to Pai, a sweet little hippie town in Northern Thailand. We are living in a home that Ian loved, where we spent Christmas with him nearly four years ago. I’m continuing to homeschool Asha and Fiona attends a dreamy local Waldorf-inspired sweet little Thai/international school. Both the girls are doing well. Fiona has healed so much this past year. We are living lives of rich community and connected spirituality surrounded by breathtaking beauty. I often feel overwhelmed with gratitude, like we’re continually being spoiled with the deepest and truest things of Life. We feel at once very broken and very blessed. Every day.
Just as we were Divinely held in those traumatic years of diagnosis and transplants and relapse and chemo and isolation and suffering, so we are currently held just as tightly and faithfully in the often mundane and maddening struggles of life as a single parented family of three. I feel as if I’ve been gifted this rich treasury of lessons learned together with Ian in the intense fire of those last years with him, and now I have the rest of my life to be trained in living them out in the fire of everyday life.
That's where we are at.
That's where we are at.
Happy Birthday Ian.
We love and miss you.
✨❤️✨
