The Pratt's Guide to Heart Warrior Parenting

Note to the reader: This post includes a lot of science fiction themes and may be unsuitable for linear thinkers.  Just kidding- you should read it anyway.  😜  It is hard to believe, but as August sets in, we are only weeks away from the 1 yr anniversary of Liam's death. There are days when I hold my breath as I open Facebook because I know I will be invited to relive the weeks and days leading up to that wretched weekend. And like any parent who wishes things had gone differently, I begin to pick apart those days and moments, wondering if perhaps I could have done something that would have altered the course of his future. The answer is neither yes nor no- the alternative endings live only in a foggy space in my mind.  As a great lover of literature, specifically Science Fiction (Sci-Fi), I have been processing my grief through that lens recently. This confession may turn me into a nerdy caricature of myself in the eyes of my readers, but I don't mind. Regardless i...

Before Christ (B.C.) and After Death (A.D.). Your first living memory. Your last tragedy. Our lives are all marked by a series of Year Zero events. It’s the point in which life as we knew it is obliterated and a new world order takes its place in our minds. The clock does not turn back and “the time before” falls away behind a shimmering, impenetrable veil of what may never be again.  Liam’s death marks a Year Zero in our lives. In my mind, I will now and forever mark an event as happening before or after we lost our son. Some of the readers here also mark time from this point, mostly family and close friends.  For my 1 yr old, Josie, this period of time will fade naturally behind the veil of baby memories and her only touchstone with her brother will be in photos and videos. How grateful I am that we have those methods of sharing the love her brother had for her. I am constantly impressed by Eliza’s memory, but as a 4 yr old, her memories of Liam will likely fade as well. I...

     In the US, when someone we love dies, there are a myriad of ways we convey the death of a person to those around us: They “passed on.” They are “no longer with us.” They are “in a better place.” It’s all very sterile and removed from the reality of death. The way we speak about death points to the way we expect the family and friends of the deceased to act. We should be sad, but not too sad. After all, the person we loved is “in a better place.” We should feel sorrow for a certain amount of time, but then we should “move on.” To someone who has experienced the death of someone very close to them, all of these cultural norms feel insane, but surrounded by a homogeny of expectations we start to feel that maybe we’re the ones who are a little bit crazy.             But we’re not crazy. Our Western traditions are not random- we’ve been indoctrinated into a culture based on a massive misinterpretation of Christia...

A lot of money and energy is spent on and around Mother's Day to promote the celebration of mothers. When many think about Mother's Day, images of breakfast in bed and presents surrounding a grateful and gracious matriarch come to mind.  It's the one day universally recognized as the day moms don't have to cook, clean, or pick up after their children. What a gift.  Under the cloyingly sweet surface is a myriad of complex emotions that most of us feel, but don't feel comfortable outwardly expressing. After all, Mother's Day is supposed to be happy, like Christmas. The truth is that Mother's Day is layered. For everyone observing the holiday, it could be that the relationship to their mother is estranged or difficult. Perhaps they are remembering a mother who died many years ago- or just last year. Melancholy can be the overarching emotion on such a day. There are women who want to be mothers, but only have losses or piles of negative pregnancy tests to show f...

For a while now, I've been working through how I feel about my faith. At first, I wondered if I was experiencing what many people call, "a crisis of faith," but that didn't feel quite right. And then I read a beautiful book about grief and I realized my crisis wasn't about my faith but about my culture. The truth is, most people are so ignorant of grief that all they can do is stand impatiently patting their pants leg and then say something completely unhelpful like,  "Everything happens for a REASON,"  or, "God has a PLAN,"  or my personal least favorite, "HIS WAYS are higher than our ways." What do any of these popular phrases even mean when submitted to or around people experiencing deep grief? Sure, you believe God has a plan for you and your family . But when we sit down and bear this out logically, what does that mean for our child? Did God not have a plan for Liam and that's why he died? Did he get bored and decide on a sh...

I want to start this by first ensuring readers understand I have not served in the military although I know several friends and family members who have. After seeking advice from my brother, who served in Afghanistan, I feel comfortable sharing the following thoughts. There are few people who understand what it’s like to be parents to a chronically ill child. We call kids like Liam “heart warriors,” because living each day well is a hard-won victory. Being a parent to a child like Liam requires extensive training, sacrifice, and 24/7 vigilance. The last 32 months have been spent with our "heads on a swivel." I was speaking to my oldest younger brother recently and we were discussing analogies. Even for my siblings, it's hard for them to understand what it has been like to be parents to Liam.  Separated by over 350 miles, their view is limited to Facebook, this blog, and the few days a year we spend together at various family celebrations. We agreed heart parenting does...

It’s been 10 days since Liam died and our lives feel like an episode of “The Twilight Zone.” Real, yet surreal with a lingering gut punch feeling- especially at night when the girls are asleep and the brain just won’t turn off.  At first, the images that replayed were of the Saturday evening when things turned terrible. Turning to pack a syringe of food for the ED and turning back to see Liam in cardiac arrest. As I type this the images jump back into my mind. Now, the images and thoughts are Sunday and all the things that day which led up to our boy’s death. What if? is a game all parents play when one of their children dies. It’s a game no one wins and yet is played countless times everyday. Ambien helps when, even exhausted, my mind goes into overdrive wondering what could have been if only we’d done this or that.. . All that thinking does not reverse the clock- instead, I’m stuck in this endless loop. During the day, there are our girls to take care of. Eliza is 4 & 1/2-...