We Started Over

We're on vacation this week.

Just the four of us.

Me. Nick. Kai. Bodhi.

Somewhere between airport security and watching the boys disappear down a trail without us hovering, something hit me.

We're finally back.

Not back to who we were. That doesn't exist anymore.

Back to where we were.

Parents know what I mean.

No stroller.

No Pack 'n Play.

No diapers tucked into every bag.

Nobody waking us in the middle of the night.

Everyone carries their own backpack. Orders their own food. Uses the bathroom without an entourage. We can actually sit for a few minutes while the kids entertain themselves.

It's that sweet spot of family life where the constant tending begins to ease.

And then I realized something.

The last time our family was in this stage...

William was alive.

When William died, Kai was six.

Our boys had reached that magical age where life, while still wonderfully busy, no longer revolved around naps and snacks and sippy cups. We weren't planning on having another baby. We thought that chapter of our lives had closed.

Then William died.

And everything changed.

Not just because we lost our son.

Because we lost our place in time.

After William died, we made the decision to have another baby.

People often tell us what a beautiful decision that was.

They're right.

Bodhi is one of the greatest joys of my life. I cannot imagine our family without him. If I had to make the decision again a thousand times, I would choose him every single time.

But that's not really the story I want to tell you today.

The story is what it took to get here.

We didn't have another baby because we simply wanted one more.

We weren't already planning to grow our family.

We weren't surprised by an unexpected pregnancy.

We had another child because our family had been shattered, and we were trying to find a way to keep living inside it.

We couldn't imagine Kai growing up as an only child after losing his brother.

So we went back.

Back to cribs.

Back to bottles.

Back to sleepless nights.

Back to baby gates.

Back to buying everything all over again because we'd already given it away.

Back to toddler tantrums and tiny shoes and Bob Books and refusing to wear pants.

None of this is a complaint.

It's simply the truth.

Grief doesn't only take people.

Sometimes it takes decades.

While our friends are moving toward high school graduations and driver's licenses, we are buckling a five-point harness.

My brother will likely be an empty nester in two years.

Many of our closest friends, whose children were the same ages as William and Kai, now have two teenagers in high school.

We're packing lunch for first grade.

Neither life is better.

They're just profoundly different.

This week I realized something I hadn't noticed before.

Bodhi is almost six.

The same age Kai was when William died.

It has taken nearly eight years for our family to arrive back at this stage of life.

Eight years to once again be the family where everyone is mostly independent.

Eight years to return to the place where travel feels easy again.

Eight years to catch up to the life we had already been living.

Except, of course, we never really caught up.

Because William should be here too.

Sometimes I wonder what life would look like if he were.

Sometimes I imagine two teenage boys rolling their eyes at us on this very trip.

Sometimes I think about how different our days would be if we had simply continued on the path we were already walking.

Those thoughts don't mean I love Bodhi any less.

They simply acknowledge something grief asks of us all the time:

to hold two truths at once.

I can be endlessly grateful for the son who brought laughter back into our home.

And I can mourn the life that was taken from us.

Both are true.

Both deserve space.

People often think grief is only about missing the person who died.

But grief is also about missing the life you were living.

The future you expected.

The timeline you thought was yours.

Our family changed the day William died.

Then it changed again the day Bodhi was born.

Both changes required us to become entirely different people.

And now, almost eight years later, sitting here on vacation, watching our boys run ahead of us without needing to hold our hands, I realized we've finally returned to this stage of family life.

Not because time healed us.

But because we built an entirely new road to get here.

I wanted to tell you that because there are countless families quietly carrying stories like this.

Stories that no one sees.

Grief doesn't just change your heart.

Sometimes it changes the entire course of your life.