{"id":1278,"date":"2008-09-08T23:27:45","date_gmt":"2008-09-09T03:27:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/?p=1278"},"modified":"2008-09-08T23:27:45","modified_gmt":"2008-09-09T03:27:45","slug":"candles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/?p=1278","title":{"rendered":"Candles"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last month, when I was having a really rough time, <a href=\"http:\/\/wontfearlove.blogspot.com\/\">Julia<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/serenitynowinfertile.wordpress.com\/\">Serenity<\/a> sent me a care package with some teas and candles. (The generousity of you people is just amazing.)<\/p>\n<p>Sadly, the post office was not kind to the package and most of the encased-in-glass candles were quite broken. After letting them sit in the box for a couple of days, broken bits rattling whenever I touched it, I decided to at least inspect them to see if any of them survived. I pulled each one out carefully, glass chunks falling from the wax. Definitely broken. What the hell had the post office done, played football with the damn package?<\/p>\n<p>But one was okay. It had a small crack, but was still intact. Mostly I was relieved that the gift wasn&#8217;t entirely to waste &#8211; I always feel so much worse for the gift-giver than myself, almost guilty that someone went out of their way for me only to end up like that. I set the candle aside.<\/p>\n<p>Saturday, September 6th. I was home from work, it was getting late, and I suddenly felt like I needed to <i>do<\/i> something. I couldn&#8217;t let the date passed unnoticed. I knew then what that candle was for. And then I took photos&#8230; freezing time, marking that day in visual form, creating memories to place lovingly in Devin&#8217;s scrapbook.<\/p>\n<p>Then Sunday night, and Monday too, I lit the candle again when I moved to the bedroom on my laptop. It burns down slowly, flickering soft light in the bedroom. I let it burn until I go to sleep, then I blow it out.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been thinking about this candle, this single cracked candle, wondering why. This is a theme lately. Look at the tree: a gorgeous healthy, full-bodied tree. It died back, it struggled&#8230; we lost more than half of the tree. But it remained. Broken and bruised and no longer perfect, no longer whole&#8230; but enough of it remained. And now this candle, too&#8230; the last one of the batch, one survived when the rest did not.<\/p>\n<p>There is meaning there. Sometimes I just can&#8217;t see it. Though oftentimes I think I am just grasping at straws&#8230; trying to find meaning where is none, trying to find something to make this all make a little bit of sense.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last month, when I was having a really rough time, Julia and Serenity sent me a care package with some teas and candles. (The generousity of you people is just amazing.) Sadly, the post office was not kind to the package and most of the encased-in-glass candles were quite broken. After letting them sit in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[76,69],"class_list":["post-1278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ivf-3","tag-loss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1278\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}