Wearing: Artist's Rendering Dress

Anthro Dress: Artist's Rendering  Shirt: J.Crew  Pumps: Nine West  Bag: Vera Wang  Watch: AE

Bridges are so symbolic. After losing someone you love, there's a great danger in constantly trying to go back...to stay stuck on the bridge spanning the rift of before and afterwards.  It's hard to find the balance between moving forward and reconciling with what lies behind you.

When my brother died, so many people told me life would get back to normal, but for my family, our old 'normal' was never coming back--Nathaniel was gone and everything involving that relationship was missing.  After the funeral, my parents and I faced the lengthy sorrow of trying to redefine how our family would function in the future, how our lives would play out from that point--even sitting down to dinner as a family was heartbreaking. Nathaniel's nonappearance was louder than our presence, and we faced the constant reminder that nothing new could ever happen between us and him.

 

Redefining normal is such a fluid process--the search for stable ground, an adventure.  It will never be over.  There will never come an exact moment when I can type my last thought, hit the print button and declare, "It's finished"...because dealing with loss doesn't necessarily get easier...it just gets different.

While my life has settled into another normal place, things will never return to the way they were while my brother was alive. When I try to take it in, the truth of it is still too enormous to grasp--knowing I'll never again find myself folded in the warmth of his hug or the thrill of his laughter.

I will never simply burn the bridge between what happened and afterwards.  I will always be redefining.  At each new stage in my children's lives, I reconcile with the reality that my brother will never meet them.  I embrace with amazed wonder the gift of knowing him for eighteen years and worship in awe the Creator who is on my side, at work in my life, who allowed me to walk for a brief moment with such a special person. 

I am constantly crossing the bridge between two extremes--remembering and appreciating the magic and mystery of being Nathaniel's sister and getting so caught up in life now that I block it out all together.

Excerpts from my up-coming book, After Nathaniel

Wearing: Tea-Stained Chiffon

Good evening, readers! As promised you all when I first told you about my upcoming book release, I've included a small excerpt from the first chapter of the book in this post. The process of publishing a book has seemed overwhelming and invasive some days and the publicity has been more involved than I would have ever imagined, but the anticipation of holding something so tangible in my hands keeps me strong.

(Sundance Chiffon dress, Claire's hemp belt, Nine West Wedges, AE watch)

The evening was filled with a million happy moments.

My parents and Nathaniel, along with my boyfriend, Scott, and I, had just finished eating out at a family-style restaurant and were headed home. The brilliant rays of the late evening sun were intense, whitewashing the colors as they poured through the window into the backseat of my father's car. The smell of boxed fried chicken lingered in the air and the conversation assumed the lazy tempo that often accompanies a satisfying meal. In a moment that seems suspended in time, my brother looked at me with eyes as wide and clear as the Texas sky--that oh, so familiar grin cutting a crooked line across his face.

"All I know, Kristina, is that I'd better die before you do, 'cuz I could never live without you", he said, matter-of-factly.

Some moments take your breath away, while others are so pure and beautiful in their simplicity, you don't recognize their significance until later. I will never know if my strong, strapping eighteen-year-old brother felt any insecurity in saying those words to me.

What matters most now, is that he said them.

--Excerpt from After Nathaniel