I've rarely spoken of the loss of my wife and I's late daughter, 🌹Juniper Rose Peterson 🌹 or June for short, so here's to hoping writing will form a collective thought of why this has been the hardest time of my life.
Time heals all wounds
The phrase still sends shooting pangs through my body.
Grief is a hard emotion to handle. Not just for myself but for everyone. A year ago my wife and I had made a choice to start a family. We chose to get pregnant. I talked to June, sang to her, the two of us were so in love with her before she even came to being. Before we held her for the first time an infinite love beating through us for her and for one another.
The word joy would fall light-years of what we felt.
All until a day short of my birthday, June 1st. Only a week before our due date her heartbeat had stopped.
The phonecall came from my wife while I was at work. And all in seconds I understood grief. Crippling, debilitating grief. Grief that makes time stop and turns your heart into an empty pit swallowing every bit of love and happiness you'd come to know. The next days were not tough. They were impossible. My birthday came with tears and no happiness. As we planned inducing my wife the same day. Pain sending shockwaves through our combined families. And it was so hard listening to people try to comfort us because what words are there? It won't be okay. She won't get better. I can say I am incredibly thankful for who we had to love and support us through the times. It goes without saying without them I don't know if we could have made it.
Now it's June 3rd. Our daughter was born. Not alive, but loved eternally. And not a day goes by I don't think of coming home from work to hold her fragile hands and kiss her goodnight. A mother's grief is incomprable. So for the next few months we heard the nurses say Be there for your wife, this will be very hard for her or the mortitian saying this will be much harder for her than it will be for you our families guiding me telling me Tyler you have to help her through this. It was any man's youth once again. I shut my emotions down and I was there. I still am. And I do my best to keep her on her feet and happy. "Stop crying and man up" they would say to me as a kid. A father's grief exists. And every day even 6 months later I struggle to breathe walking into a home that I don't hear a child cry. I do my best to eat and my best to laugh but it's going to take a lot of time to push through. A silent suffering for the strength of my wife is what this has been. But we are taking time. Time to be with each other and time to grow. We one day know the family we wanted will come to fruition. I suppose that will be after Time heals all wounds.
I love and think of you always.
