Letting Go While Holding On

Letting go while holding on is probably something that you never thought was possible. Well, it’s possible. If you’re following me on Instagram, you know that I haven’t posted in a few days. I needed a break.

I’ve just been mentally and physically exhausted, and completely unmotivated.

Dallas was supposed to be my break. It was supposed to be 4 days of me getting away with my family and not having to work. Guess what? I found myself working in my hotel room because I had so many deadlines to meet. Hurricane Irma really set things back for me and it sucked. So here I was in Dallas staying up late at night to work instead of being snuggled up in bed with my family.

On top of it all, this was our first trip without Tristan. We always take Tristan with us when we’re traveling. This time we couldn’t. I found out the night before that because his urn is marble, we wouldn’t be able to transport it on the airplane with us. My heart broke.

I started scrambling trying to figure out how we were going to be able to take him with us or whether or not I should cancel my trip and stay behind. I had a minor meltdown after I got off of the phone with the airline because it was my fault. Had I planned a little better, I would’ve remembered that I needed to call the airline sooner and check on their rules. I felt like I had failed. I had failed not only myself but my family because we always look forward to toting him around with us when we’re experiencing new places. Instead of thinking about who was going to hold him on the plane, I found myself laying in bed crying over the fact that this would be the first time since losing Tristan that we weren’t going to be able to take him with us. Then something hit me while I was in the moment. I don’t know if it was Tristan in the room with me or my sweet baby boy trying to send me a sign, but I realized that my son is always going to be with me no matter where I am.

I realized that I’m not leaving him behind. He’ll always be with me and I’ll always have the memories that we created together. I have endless pictures and videos to remind me of his precious soul. Although it’s helpful in our healing process to tote his urn around from city to city, I had to learn to let it go, at least for this trip anyways. I had to learn that although I’m letting go of the urn, I’m still holding on to our memories. The hardest part about it all is trying to teach Tatiana the same thing. We all grieve in different ways and Tatiana is naturally an emotional person so when I told her the news, she was devastated. We cried together. But then it got better.

The funny thing is that during our first hours in Dallas we saw a beautiful giraffe mural. If you’ve read any of my other Tristan stories then you know by now that giraffes were his favorite. That giraffe was confirmation that TJ was in Dallas with us. Moving forward we’ve got a better plan of how to get TJ on that next plane with us but even if we can’t, we know that he’s always right there with us and we’re honoring his memory every single day.

Photos by Luisa’s Secret