Sixteen Years Later

Last week, our family remembered sixteen years since Paige’s birth and death. Sixteen years. Sometimes that feels impossible to say out loud. People occasionally ask me if grief gets easier with time, and I never quite know how to answer that. There are certainly things that change, but I don’t think healing has looked the way I imagined it would when I was thirty years old. If anything, these last sixteen years have shown me how patient the Lord is. I’m still learning things today that I couldn’t have understood five years after Paige died, or even ten. The Lord has a gentle way of teaching us what we’re ready to learn, when we’re ready to learn it, and I’m so thankful He hasn’t stopped doing that in my life.

A few weeks ago, my mom and I spent a Friday evening recording a podcast together. We don’t live in the same town anymore, so it felt special just to have an evening together. We laughed, we cried, and we remembered Paige. Before we started recording, though, we had a conversation we’d somehow never had in sixteen years, and it started with flowers. For years, my mom would take flowers to Paige’s graveside before I got there on her birthday. And if I’m honest, that always hurt. I don’t think I ever really told my mom that, and I’m not even sure I could have explained why back then. I just knew that when I arrived at the cemetery and saw flowers already sitting there, my heart sank.

Looking back now, I can see that I had decided why my mom was doing that without ever asking her. But before I tell you the story I had written in my mind about my mom, I think it’s important to tell you the story I believed about myself, because the stories we believe about ourselves have a way of shaping the stories we tell ourselves about everyone else. After Paige died, I carried so much guilt. I believed my body had failed her. I believed I had failed her. I believed I hadn’t been able to protect her or keep her alive. None of those things were true, but they were things I believed, and they became some of the deepest wounds I carried in those early years.

Even after Paige died, I still wanted to mother her somehow. I couldn’t do the things I had dreamed of doing, but my heart kept looking for the few ways I could still love her. I had to learn what mothering looked like when the little girl I loved wasn’t in my arms anymore. I couldn’t hold her close and breathe in that sweet baby smell. I couldn’t kiss her cheeks, hear the sound of her voice, watch her try new foods, or see the glimmer in her eyes when she smiled. I couldn’t paint her tiny toenails, brush the wisps of hair behind her ear as she drifted off to sleep, celebrate birthdays the way I had imagined, or simply watch her grow. Those were the ordinary moments of motherhood I had dreamed about. They probably wouldn’t have seemed extraordinary while I was living them, but after Paige died, they became some of the deepest losses I grieved because they represented the life I had longed for that would never come to be.

But there were still a few things I could do. I could write about her. I could wear jewelry with her initial around my neck. One of the things that became especially meaningful to me was buying two identical bouquets from the farmer’s market every year on her birthday. One stayed in my kitchen window where I could enjoy it all week, and the other went to Paige’s grave. To someone else, they were probably just flowers, but to me, they weren’t. They were one of the few ways I still knew how to love my daughter on her birthday. And somehow, seeing the same bouquet in my kitchen window that was resting at Paige’s grave made me feel close to her. It was one small way I could still share something with my daughter on her birthday, even though death had separated us. For a little while, she didn’t feel quite so far away.

So when I arrived at the cemetery and saw flowers already there, it wasn’t really about the flowers. It was about so much more. It touched one of the deepest wounds in my heart, a place that already felt so raw that the slightest bump made it ache all over again. Seeing those flowers felt like one more reminder that I couldn’t even do this one thing for Paige. Someone else had gotten there first. Someone else had managed to get out of bed earlier than I had, and I couldn’t even be the first one to bring flowers to my little girl on her birthday. It made me feel like a bad mom, like I was failing again in another way. I know that may not make perfect sense. Grief often doesn’t. I’m simply letting you into one of the deepest places of my heart, and I have a feeling some of you know exactly what I’m talking about.

As the years passed, though, I tried to make sense of those feelings. Because I know my mom, I eventually settled on what felt like the most gracious explanation. I told myself she was trying to love me by remembering my grief. She wanted me to know she hadn’t forgotten Paige, but more than that she hadn’t forgotten me either. That’s how I imagine I would want to love my own daughter if she ever had to walk through a heartbreak like this.

Then, sixteen years later, I finally asked my mom, and her answer caught me completely off guard. She wasn’t thinking about my flowers, and she wasn’t even primarily thinking about me. She was thinking about Paige. She told me that over the years she never really knew whether I wanted anyone with me on Paige’s birthday or not. She knew those anniversaries had become something Brian, the kids, and I usually spent together, and because she loved me, she wanted to give me the space she believed I needed. She loved her granddaughter, and she needed to grieve her too. So she would go to the cemetery early, hoping to be gone before I arrived.

For sixteen years, I thought she was taking something from me. But now I can see that she was giving something to me. She was making room for me. Until that conversation, I don’t think I had ever really stopped to consider what it meant to be Paige’s grandma. No one loved Paige the way I did because I was her mom. No one could. But my mom loved Paige deeply too, and she had dreams for her. She imagined holding her and feeling those tiny fingers wrap around hers. She imagined dressing her in the little outfits she’d lovingly picked out, watching her take those first wobbly steps, seeing her eyes light up at the twinkling lights on the Christmas tree, celebrating birthdays, and making memories with her granddaughter. She also imagined watching me be Paige’s mom. Those dreams were different than mine, but they were hers, and they were every bit as real. When Paige died, I wasn’t the only one whose dreams died. Hers did too. For sixteen years, I carried a hurt that was very real. But the story I had written about why it happened wasn’t. For the first time, I could see those birthday flowers through my mom’s eyes instead of my own.

I’ve thought about our conversation many times over the past few weeks. Not because it changed the way I miss Paige. It didn’t. And not because I suddenly think my younger self should have handled things differently. She was carrying more than she knew how to carry. I’ve thought about it because it reminded me how easy it is to interpret someone else’s actions through the lens of our own pain. When we’re deeply wounded, we don’t just feel hurt. We often begin telling ourselves stories about why people do what they do, and sometimes those stories simply aren’t true. I’ve been wondering how many relationships might look different if we were willing to ask one more question before deciding we understood someone else’s heart.

I’m so thankful my mom and I finally had that conversation. It gave me a deeper appreciation for her love, not only for me, but for Paige. But even more than that, it gave me a deeper appreciation for the patient heart of God. Thirty-year-old Jennie wasn’t ready to understand what I understand today. She was trying to survive the worst thing that had ever happened to her. She was carrying more than she knew how to carry, and the Lord knew that. He didn’t shame me for what I couldn’t see. He didn’t expect me to understand everything while my heart was breaking. Instead, He patiently walked with me for sixteen years until in His kindness, I was finally ready to see another side of the story. I used to think healing meant arriving at a place where there was nothing left to learn. Now I wonder if healing looks more like continuing to follow Jesus, trusting that He will keep meeting us, keep changing us, and gently revealing what we’re ready to see when we’re ready to see it. I’m so thankful He hasn’t finished with me yet.

Hope Mom, if your loss is still fresh and everything hurts, I am so, so sorry. I remember those early days. I remember how one small thing could completely undo me because it wasn’t really about that one thing. Grief has a way of touching places that are already so wounded, and sometimes we don’t even understand why something hurts as much as it does. The Lord was so near to me in those days, and He is near to you too.

But if you’re reading this years after the day your baby died, and there’s a relationship you treasure that still carries an old hurt, maybe it’s worth asking one more question. I know not every conversation ends with understanding. Some relationships aren’t safe, some people aren’t willing, and some conversations simply aren’t possible anymore. But sometimes they are. And sometimes, by God’s grace, you discover there was another story you never knew. You realize someone else who loved your baby was carrying their own grief too, and what felt like rejection or hurt wasn’t born out of a lack of love at all, but out of another broken heart trying to find its way through an impossible loss.

That’s what happened for me. Today, when I think about those birthday flowers, the first thing I think about isn’t the hurt anymore. I think about my mom. I think about a grandmother who loved her granddaughter deeply and a mom who loved her daughter enough to make room for the grief she thought I needed to carry. I’m so grateful for my mom. I’m grateful she loves Paige so fiercely. And I’m grateful that, sixteen years later, the Lord gave us the gift of seeing each other’s hearts a little more clearly. I simply wasn’t ready to see it before, and in His kindness, He waited until I was.

Jennie

P.S. If this story resonated with you, I’d love to invite you to listen to the conversation my mom and I had together on the Hope Mommies Podcast. It’s called After Paige: A Conversation Between Mother and Daughter. We talk about the day Paige died, how we’ve each carried grief over the last sixteen years, and the conversation that changed the way I understood those birthday flowers. I hope it encourages you.

Jennie is the Executive Director for Hope Mommies. She and her husband Brian live in Oregon and have four children together— Trenton, Paige who has been in Heaven with Jesus since 2010, Mason, and Cora. If you were to knock on her front door today, you’d find her in something comfortable drinking a hot cup of tea, while trying to figure out how to balance all the things that make up a life. She enjoys spending time in God’s word, fresh flowers, board games with her kids, cooking, and evening walks in her neighborhood. She adores being a new creation in Christ and prays she reflects Him well on this earth.