This and that...

Aaron finished the boy's casket late last night. It is absolutely perfect - his finest piece. I am so thankful he was able to do this. I will post pictures later.

Last night I was talking to my nieces and my sister told them Grandma Jean would be taking care of the babies, rocking them, etc. Grandma Jean is in heaven with the boys. "And Santa too?" Jessa said. Priceless. My three year old neice Keigan who has the most beautifully raspy voice and who speaks slowly said,
"You crrrying?"
"Yes Keigan, I cry because I'm sad."
She looked right through me and flatly said,
"Cause your baaabies died."
I will hear her voice saying that forever. I laughed and cried at the same time - the most heartbreaking, innocent thing anyone has ever said to me.

My milk came in last night and I make Dolly look like a school boy. Apparently they didn't get the message. I had so looked forward to being able to nurse the boys and the spent all last week on triplet blogs of mom's who nursed figuring out logistics. That was to be my full time job for the next year. I thought about pumping and donating but what I really need to get back to my son who lost his mom for the past five months.

Thank you all again for the messages, the food, the flowers and the memorials to the March of Dimes. It is so comforting to feel so loved. Please don't shy away from us. We never want this to be the elephant in the room.

It's a beautiful day. It was raining when they died and now the sun is out. How appropriate. I have included a story below that was read at our friend Andrew's funeral last year. It impacted both Aaron and I profoundly and we want to share this about the will of God.

.....Sometimes when someone dies too soon, by an accident, as Andrew did, sometimes in
our grief, frequently, in fact, we look for someone to blame. Physicians know it. People who work in hospitals know it. Ministers know how natural it is to try to find someone who is responsible for this and occasionally in that process we blame God, or seem to blame God, by trying to reassure one another that there is a wisdom operating here that is beyond our own, that this death, or any untimely death, was somehow the will of God, part of God's plan.

William Sloane Coffin, Intelligence Officer in the Army (WWII), brilliant intellect, concert pianist, became a minister, chaplain at Yale during the Vietnam War, minister of Riverside Church in Manhattan, and became one of the great preachers of our age. His 24 year old son Alex, died in a traffic accident when his car skidded off the road in a terrible storm and plunged into Boston Harbor.

The next Sunday Coffin somehow managed to get up into his pulpit and preach a sermon,
Alex's Death. He said:

"When a person dies, there are many things that can be said, and there is at least one thing that should never be said."

And then Coffin explained that a well-meaning woman had said to him that she just didn't understand the will of God. His response was immediate and strong:

"I"ll say you don't understand, lady! Do you think it was God's will that Alex
never fixed that lousy windshield wiper of his . . . that there are no streetlights
or guard rails along that stretch of road?"

And then he reflected helpfully for his congregation in words that are important and helpful to us today, sitting in church in a similar situation:

"God is dead set against all unnatural deaths . . . The one thing that should never
be said when someone dies is that it is the will of God. Never do we know
enough to say that. My own consolation lies in the fact that it was not the will of
God that Alex die; that when the waves closed over the sinking car, God's heart
was the first of all of our hearts to break."

Aaron and I believe our son's came into this world naturally and left this world naturally. And when they passed it was God's heart that was first to break.