A Year of Suviving and Thriving

Last week marked the 1 year anniversary of my brother-in-law, Chris Sr's, death. He died unexpectedly of a heart attack at age 32. My sister-in-law and good friend, Heather (who is my husband's sister) was left with their two kids, Chris Jr (now 5), Ariel (now 3), and at the time she was pregnant with baby Hope (who is now 7 months old.) Chris was a fun guy to be around. He was very social and he always seemed to have friends hanging out at his house. He also was a minister with his church and was very passionate about his faith and his love of God. He did a lot of work in spreading the news of God's love for everyone and wasn't afraid to talk to people currently in the lowest of lows.  

It goes with out saying that this past year has been a difficult year full of grief, changes, and challenges for Heather and her children. But this year did bring many wonderful blessings, the biggest of all was the birth of Hope Alexandra. Heather is an amazingly strong women. There are many hard moments and days but she has a lot of faith in the Lord which helps her along. For me, its been a bit difficult to be so far from her (well, only an hour or so but still its not right around the corner.) Its difficult to want to be able to help in the small moments only to be so far away.  For example, when baby Hope had colic it was so sad knowing Heather was home late at night dealing with a crying baby and fighting with the other two to go to bed while being all  by herself with no relief. It is moments like that we are thankful for things like text messaging!

As the 1 yr anniversary date of Chris's death approached Heather decided she wanted to have a celebration. She wanted Chris's life to be remembered. But what she really wanted was to celebrate a year of her not only Surviving but a year of Thriving. She wanted to celebrate her survival of all the "firsts" in her new normal. She wanted to celebrate the fact that even though her best friend and love is no longer by her side she can still smile, laugh, and have joy. So we had a party!

I went the night before and we had a big slumber party with the kids. On Friday we cleaned the house, the kids played, Heather went shopping for supplies while I watched the kids, we prepared the food. The really fun and amazing part was an art project Heather came up with. On pieces of paper she wrote events, emotions she has dealt with, and all "stuff" she survived and thrived through in the past year. Then we hung the papers on the wall which created a large visual memorial acknowledging and celebrating this incredible year. It really was an amazing ritual.

(picture: I think we added more after this picture was taken.)

Then we ate, visiting, talked about Chris, talked about life. People who stopped by to join the party would walk in the door and immediately see the Wall of Thriving. They would read it and then say, "Heather you forgot to write XYZ on the wall." Heather would grab a pen and add the suggested event to the Wall of Thriving.