Thin Spots

On Wednesday (March 16th), while driving home from the gym, the kids spotted Heavy's cemetery and asked to see him.  It was a great warm day, the snow was melting and the they had rain boots on, so I said yes, we could go. The car erupted into cheers!  They hadn't been up the hill to his grave since the snow had fallen.  We parked the car, found a spot on his hill where the snow wasn't very deep and hiked up to his grave.

The cemetery ground keepers were removing the Christmas wreaths that day and Heavy's had already been removed, leaving a depression in the melting snow.  Peter laid down in the depression, curled up and kissed the snow next to him, pat it gently and said, "I love you Heavy."  I stood holding Maria's hand watching my son have a moment with his brother.  We all were silent.

A car pulled up near ours a few minutes later and out came a man (who appeared to be a hired driver) and an old woman holding a bouquet of tulips.  They slowly made their way up the snowy hill made slippery and sticky by all of the March melting and began wandering around near us.  The beautiful woman with deep set wrinkles got her bearings by measuring her paces between the monument stones.  She was standing next to me, shoulder to shoulder.

In a mix of gestures, broken English, drawing in the snow and some help from her driver, we learned that she was looking for the headstone of her daughter, a surgeon who died in 2008 from breast cancer.  She knew the location of her daughters plot by the wreath that was next to it...  Heavy's.  I explained that the wreath, was my son's who died shortly after birth in October.  I showed the mother and her driver where her daughter's headstone should be.  They began to dig.... and dig... and dig... after nearly ten minutes of digging with a plastic cone/vase for the flowers, they struck granite.  The whole shape of the woman's face and wrinkles changed.  She was ELATED to have found her daughter.  We hugged.  We got tears in our eyes.  It was her daughter's birthday.

A very holy moment. Two mothers- one young, one old. Two children- one life so short, another lived and taken too soon. Two different native tounges.  One messy emotion of love, loss, joy, pain, and relief of having found your child.

This mother poured water in to the plastic cone/vase/shovel, which she brought with her in a Snapple jar and arranged the flowers.  She looked at the arrangement and smiled.  I can only imagine her thoughts and heart whispers to her daughter and to God.

I may never again see this woman, however, I will always remember her and honor the memory of her daughter when I visit my son and  I will never forget how close Heaven seemed to me that day, in the Celtic Christian tradition, those moments are called Thin Spots.  It was HOLY Time.

Celebrations!

The months of January and February are always fun months for our family.  Peter and I celebrate our wedding anniversary on January 10th, my birthday is on January 26th and Peter's birthday is on February 29th.  We celebrated our 7th year of marriage this year and are amazed at how quickly those years have gone by and all that they have been filled with. We are Thankful!

Yesterday was my 28th birthday, we had a nice time as a family doing normal life stuff, but this week marks more than the day of my birth.  It was my birthday week last year when we found out we were expecting a baby.  So we have been celebrating our Heavy too.   I miss him, and love him so much, while being in AWE of the power of God to mend our hearts.  We have resumed Fanchi life as usual and it feels so good.

Here are some pics of the kids from today playing "Mountain Climber" on the hill in front of our house.

It is my prayer that you find events and people to celebrate in your life.

~Chelsea

"Cheese Me Mama"

"Cruising down!"

Heavy's Wreath

Today was the first day we have been to the cemetery in over two weeks.  We felt a desire to go and visit the babe before the snow fell and Peter and Maria were game for a visit too.  They love to go to the cemetery because we let them take off their seat belts :)

When we arrived we purchased a wreath to place on Heavy's grave, both for the Christmas season but also so we can find his "place" when the snow is on the ground.  ~~Hence the picture above~~

People have been asking me how we are doing.  My answer is simple... we are doing really well.  We did SO much grieving and processing before Heavy was born, that the after grief has not been a weighty burden. We have found a new rhythm for our family, and are working on taking back our life.  Since May Heavy and his well-being was the center of our everyday decisions.  We are really enjoying putting some pieces of our life back together.  We are also simply enjoying life: each other, the seasons, and our friends.  God has richly blessed us.

Thank you friends for so faithfully showing concern for our family and praying for us as we have traveled this road.  Please continue to walk with us as we seek to do life with our community.

Much love

Some of our favorite photos

I thought some of you may like to see some more photos from our time with Heavy.

Enjoy!

Heavy's first photo! He is still gooey from being born.  Look at his eyes! He is alive!

One of my favorites. I love his sweet face here and his little foot.

Giving Heavy's his bath.  

As you can see he had a full head of hair (just like Peter and Maria), he also had dark peach fuzz on his arms.

Heavy's 18 inch casket. This photo was taken at his funeral.

Our last family photo with Heavy

Peter placing his flower next to his brother.

Maria's turn to place her flower.

My Shepherd knows where I am...

What I have to share today is nothing profound, but it is a slice of comfort for our family, and a glimpse at what the Fanchi’s are thinking…

Thursday, while putting Maria down for her nap, she asked for a Bible story instead of a book.  (We usually read the Bible stories at bedtime).  I said ok and flipped open Peter and Maria’s Children’s Bible to the next story in line, titled The Good Shepherd (Psalm 51, 2 Samuel 7 and a paraphrase of Psalm 23). 

I read aloud the children’s paraphrase of Psalm 23, “…Even when I walk through the dark, scary, lonely places I won’t be afraid because my Shepherd knows where I am….”

It has taken all three of our children to remind and re-teach Peter and I the simplicity of following Jesus.  Even when we are scared, afraid, sad, walking through the valley… our Shepherd knows right where we are. As we feel like we are settling into a new family rhythm, and are thankful and humbled by all we have been given, our Shepherd knows where we are.  In all seasons He knows us completely.

We have had good days and bad days and know that will continue. The tape that keeps playing in our head is, “our shepherd knows where we are…” We cling to our Shepherd, knowing he will not leave us.

Thank you for being on the journey with us

~Chelsea and Peter 

Heavy's Slideshow

We are so thankful to those who took care of us while Heavy was entering and exiting this world.  Kathrine, my midwife is amazing!  She has been with me for the births of all of our babies, I love her more fully than I can put into words. Kathrine had arranged wonderful nurses who would work well with our family given our situation, in fact I think one of our nurses was an angel in disguise, her name was Tiki.  She took around 300 pictures of Heavy and did lots of video taping for us (along with another nurse named Lori).

Peter and I were able to spend around 9 and half hours with Heavy after he passed.  During that time we were able to give him a bath, do hand and foot prints, take foot impressions, snip a lock of his dark silky hair and just love our boy.  Tiki was with us for around 6 of those 9-ish hours.  It is amazing how powerful experiences can draw people together, Tiki feels like family to us, like family to Heavy.  Next to his parents, Heavy's body spent the most time with her.

Heavy was born at 9:27 pm on Sunday, we were moved to our recovery room around 3:30am.  Kathrine had made arrangements for us to be in a room next to parents who have children in the NICU.  By around 4:30 am Peter and I crawled into the twin hospital bed, pulled up the bed rails on either side and placed our son, bathed and wrapped in the blanket given to him by his cousin Anabelle, and then wrapped in the fuzzy white blanket we purchased just for him in June, between us.  With our arms around each other and our sweet baby we dozed.

Leaving the hospital with empty arms was a fear of ours.  How would we know when we would be ready to leave our son behind? I had a hard time falling asleep, instead I closed my eyes, caressed Heavy's hair, placed our checks together and sang to him, by the time sleep overcame me it was around 5:30am.  I was stirred around 6:15am, I looked at our son and it was so clear that what was nestled between Peter and I was a shell.  (This clarity was an answer to prayer) I woke Peter up and we agreed that it was time to say good-bye and I love you.  We were not able to take him down to the morgue, so we called the best person we could think of... Tiki.  Before her shift was over at 7am, she came to our room, and we lovingly placed him in her arms.

Tiki gave us a wonderful gift.  Not only did she take care of us and our son with a pure love, but also created for us a keepsake we will treasure forever, our slideshow.

Enjoy meeting Heavy and catching but a glimpse of our time with him.

** I cannot figure out how to embed the video into our blog, below is the link to the video on vimeo**

vimeo.com/15829300

Heavy's Eulogy

On May 11^th we began a journey.  We did not sign up for it, and certainly were not excited about it.  We were shoved through a door that closed behind us.  The only way to go was forward.  It is on this journey we have been changed.  We have learned lessons and have been impacted forever by our son, Heavy.

The moment we laid eyes and hands on Heavy we knew and accepted in our hearts that he was not made for this world.  However, in a way his twisted and broken body was perfect.  We had come to realize that Heavy was not created to be only our son.  He is surely a precious gift, but one that we are meant to share.  He is God’s gift.  The catholic monk Thomas Merton said, “A tree glorifies God by being a tree.”  We believe that Heavy has and will glorify God by being, well, Heavy.

Perhaps the greatest example if not the greatest miracle in this is that God is a redeemer.  What should be nothing but a terrible thing God can claim and make good.  We have seen that over and over in the past 5 months

We have also learned that odds don’t always mean a whole lot.  We were told Heavy would not likely live more than 3 weeks past May 11.  But he was determined to catch a glimpse of this world.  His fight and resiliency inspire us.

Throughout our journey we have probably learned the most by watching this through the eyes of Peter and Maria. 

Maria is a sweet 2 year old.  She has always been excited about her little brother Heavy and talks now about how cute he is.  Her face lights up when she talks about holding him and kissing him nicely.  She danced her way into the funeral home the other day, so excited to see her brother one more time and give him the picture she made for him. 

Peter has been at times frighteningly profound and wise far beyond his 4 years.  The depth and innocence of his thoughts have taught us much and served as a humbling reminder of Jesus’ words in Luke 10, “…you have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent, and revealed them to little children.  Yes, Father, for this was your gracious will.”  Over the past 5 months often it has been Peter that has opened our eyes, lifted our heads, and pulled us into another phase of the journey. 

            The day we found out we would have another baby we told the kids.  Peter said, “It’s going to be a boy, and his name will be Heavy.” We didn’t think much of it at the time, but he had no idea how prophetic that was.  Then in May, finding out there were serious abnormalities in our child was a crushing blow.  We were devastated.  In that moment, Peter taught us to hope as he repeated words back to his parents that have been spoken to him when he feels his world is crashing down. Everything would be fine.  Heavy would be ok.  One of the most difficult things to watch as a parent was Peter taking his doctor kit, walking over to Chelsea’s belly and saying he was going to fix his brother.  There was then a period of time where nearly every day Peter would tell his brother jokes, snuggle Chelsea’s belly to give him hugs and kisses, and tell him goodnight before he could himself fall asleep. He was soaking up every moment he had with his little brother, and he reminded us to do the same.

            As we began to talk to the kids more about that Heavy would probably not come home with us, but instead would go straight to be with God Peter would say things like, “its ok, we will get to see him when we die and go to Heaven.”  He would wonder whether he and Heavy would go to the same Kindergarten, Heavy’s school would just be in Heaven. 

            His sense of duty to care for and love his brother is remarkable.  On Wednesday morning, we went to the funeral home to place Heavy in his casket and place in there some pictures the kids had made.  Each of the kids also brought a band-aid.  A tissue sample had been taken from Heavy’s leg and the kids each wanted to give him a band-aid to cover it.  We had planned to have the funeral director place the band-aids on Heavy and wrap him in the blanket we had brought.  We would then place him in his casket as a family.  Peter became angrier than we have ever seen him.  We found out the source of his anger was the band-aids.  He told us that he wanted to place the band-aids on Heavy’s leg because that is what a big brother should do. 

            That morning, Peter and I placed a Star Wars Yoda band-aid on Heavy’s leg, with a Strawberry Shortcake band-aid right next to it.  We then together wrapped him in his blanket and carried him to Chelsea and Maria so we all could place him in his casket.  The love and sense of duty Peter showed to his little brother was moving beyond words.

            Later that night He was talking about Heavy and how what we saw today was only his shell.  His eyes were wide as he talked about Heavy’s new body in heaven that works and is perfect.  Then he paused, and said, “Wait a minute, do you mean that when I get to heaven, I will get a new body too.  Just like this one?”  Chelsea said, “That’s right.”  Then he smiled big and said, “Isn’t Jesus nice?”

        It is with those words in our heart that we enter the next chapter of this journey.  We are thankful for the time we had with our son, we will love him forever, and we know that God is still good.

Our sweet boy before his bath

Our family