Early in the first days of grief, I made 2 choices.  Tough, gut-wrenching, deliberate, and much-needed choices.  One choice was to not allow grief be the theme of our house.  We know families where loss has created a darkness in the home that never really allows the light of life to penetrate.  We didn’t want to live in that house.

BC – Before crash, we were the family that:

• had impromptu dance parties while cleaning the house.
• got led by pixies in the forest and even got lost in that forest in the dark.
• drove to Dairy Queen in our pajamas.
• had sleepovers on the basement floor after family movie night.
• put paper plates with drops of food coloring on the driveway in rainstorms to create masterpieces.
• sang to citrus fruit, “Oh my darling, Clementine.”
• prayed and sang and read together each night.
• laughed so hard we cried.
• had an open door policy for any child, pet or wayward friend.
• made silly home movies.

We were always the family that people called in a pinch for a back-up babysitter or afternoon play-date. Our freezer was never without popsicles, pizzas, or ice cream.  There was always an extra toothbrush, blanket, or swimsuit.

As we sat in the hospital learning more and more about Sawyer’s injuries.  I made a willful choice to not allow our house to be surrounded in sadness.  We would grieve, but we would not give up.  Oh, I wanted to do that.  I wanted to dig a hole and crawl in it.  But if I did that, what would that say about the value of Sawyer, Erin, or Cloie?

Our beginnings were baby steps.  We created a nerf gun fun house while Sawyer was still wheelchair bound.  We threw our Easter egg dye all over a white sheet in the backyard; thus creating a hilarious masterpiece.  Eventually, we invited friends back over for movie nights, and we laughed and giggled again.  The BC list of fun things slowly creeped back into the rhythms of our life.  All, but one that is.  Making movies of our happiness just didn’t happen, because eventually one of us would break into tears.

It took awhile, but eventually, the old camcorder came out from its hibernation. Silly movies happened again that catalogued the current state of zany antics.  That’s exactly what happened last Saturday when we had a passel of kids staying over.

I think that Reed would definitely approve of the silliness in our house – where fun still lives.