Blessed and happy

Lydia, yesterday I visited your grave, and for the first time when doing so, I smiled and did not cry. It was a beautiful fall day. Fall has such sad memories for me: my mother dying, your sickness last year, and yet it is my favorite time of year. I left after Sunday School yesterday to walk to the cemetery and place flowers by your beautiful "Canadian Rose" tombstone. I tidied up around your area and around your grandparents graves, then I just sat with you a while. It was quiet and peaceful and my love for you flowed warmly and happily through me. How dear you are to me. I thank God for you, and though you were not here on earth long enough to suit me, I am honored and blessed and happy for the time that you were here. You were good for me. You changed me. Before leaving your grave, I took the small metal gravestone marker placed there the day you were buried, and I took it home and put it at the foot of your magnolia tree. And I did not cry.

Happy birthday

Happy birthday, sweet darling. My first thoughts upon waking this morning were of you as a newborn baby, beautiful and perfect in my arms all those years ago in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Independence Day

Sweet Lydia, Dad is cooking out today. On days like this, your absence is especially painful for us. Not having our girl here with us is unbearable everyday, though; except for the consolation of the Lord and our friends and loved ones, we would be crushed by the loneliness and sadness. We love you. We speak your name often. We cry over our loss daily. We grieve that you had to endure so much suffering and loss in your short life.
Sure wish you could be here today to have one of dad's grilled hamburgers (or hockey pucks as you always called them!) . We miss your laughter.

Four years

It was four years ago yesterday that we first found out Lydia had a brain tumor and that it was malignant. That was the day our grieving began; it was a sorrow that was so raw and unbearable. I remember looking at myself in the mirror in the restroom in ICU and feeling terribly sad for that woman that I saw there. Her heart was so broken for the beautiful daughter who was so very ill. I did not want that woman to be me.

Tomorrow is Charlie's birthday.

Consolation

I am having a very hard time tonight. I am so sad about all that Lydia went through those last 2-3 months, and I cannot get the details of it all out of my thoughts. I go over and over it in my mind and my heart breaks.

Charlie and I went to the funeral of a dear friend’s daughter this week. This daughter, in her mid 40s, died suddenly of heart attack on Christmas Eve. The mother of this daughter is a close friend of mine. As I held this friend while she sobbed uncontrollable, I wondered at the difference in the natures of our grief. I had lost my child after watching her suffer loss after loss over many months; the last months being unbearably heart breaking. Her child was gone quickly, with no warning. My friend’s grief is intense, all-consuming; she is inconsolable. Mine has gnawed relentlessly, quietly in my heart for months. I had time to prepare though, to consider what my life would be, who I would be, when Lydia passed away. I made myself consider her death, her burial, and yes, her new life in heaven. I am so lonely for her, but the hard part for me now is remembering what that brain tumor did to my beautiful, beautiful girl.

This friend lives down the road from me. It is no coincidence that two of us here on this little hill have lost our daughters within two weeks of one another, is it? Help us, Lord, as we console one another.

Merry Christmas, Lydia

It is our first Christmas without Lydia. As our family gathered, we lit a candle for her to represent our love for her and all our memories of her, as well as to acknowledge our grief and deep sorrow that she is gone.

Has it only been two weeks since she left us? It feels like years. I want so much to see her smile, to hear her laugh, to hold her close to me until she fusses, “Enough, Mom, let me go!”

It hurts so much to let her go.

Obituary

Lydia Ruth Sappington, 27, died Monday, Dec. 10, 2007, at Sanctuary Hospice House in Tupelo, Mississippi.

She was born July 14, 1980, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. She was a student and a member of Liberty Baptist Church.

Services were at 11 a.m. Wednesday, Dec. 12, at United Funeral Service chapel with the Rev. Shawn Davis and the Rev. Ted "Eddie" Chandler officiating. Burial was in Liberty Cemetery, New Albany, Mississippi.

Survivors include her parents, Charles Edwin Sappington and Donna Kay Wykle Sappington of New Albany; two brothers, Charles E. "Chuck" Sappington Jr. and Danielle of Water Valley, and Jason D. Sappington of New Orleans, La.; her grandfather, Gene A. Wykle, and stepgrandmother, Sharon, of Crestview, Fla. She was preceded in death by her grandmother, Ella Mae Wykle, and her grandparents, J. E. and Vera Sappington. Pallbearers were Connie Sappington, Bobby Sappington, Thomas Sappington, Allen Wykle, Kenny Phillips and Danny Murrah.

Memorials may be made to Sanctuary Hospice House, 5159 W. Main St., Tupelo, MS 38801.