Yesterday was our “family’s birthday” (our anniversary) so we decided to celebrate at the happiest place on earth – Disney World! It was such a fun day and the picture we took when we first entered the park was something a few years ago I could only have dreamed of. Standing there with my husband and sweet babies in red matching family t-shirts. It’s amazing for me to see my life now and all the incredible blessings the Lord has given me that I spent so many years of my life hoping for. Goodness, it’s so much more than I deserve and this picture is definitely a reminder to me of that. The day was magical in so many ways. Just like the past four years have been.
As we took the picture and looked at it after, I couldn’t help but hurt a little as I thought about how Benny wasn’t there. This perfect little family picture was missing one of my beautiful children. I feel like we’ve been doing pretty well with moving forward, but every now and then it really hits me.
If you had told me three months ago the time would come that we would even feel capable of going to Disney World, let alone enjoying ourselves, I don’t think I would have believed it. Yet here we are, moving forward and I know our sweet angel boy is happy about it as he watches over us and experiences things with us in a different way. It’s amazing the healing that time provides.
But even still, that doesn’t stop the pain sometimes or the intense realization that our sweet Benny isn’t here to experience it all with us as we do. I remember the first family picture we took after he passed away. It just didn’t feel right. Three months later, it still doesn’t feel right. It’s okay, and I’m grateful to be capturing memories, but I don’t think there will ever be a day that I see a picture of our family—just the four of us—and not feel like someone is missing.
One thing I’m sure grateful for though is the knowledge that even though Benny may be missing from our pictures, he isn’t actually missing. I know right where he is, at least theoretically. And I feel where his angelic spirit is often, which is right by my side. I’m so thankful for that knowledge and the hope I have through my faith. I know my sweet, perfect boy has been received back into the arms of his Creator and is anxiously awaiting our family’s reunion someday. That knowledge gives me hope, and that hope keeps me going.
When we were at Disney World, I had a surprising reaction to something that really caught me off guard.
Doing Disney World with two young babies is certainly different than the last time Tom and I were there. We spent our time on rides such as Dumbo the Flying Elephant and Ariel’s Secret Grotto, instead of Thunder Mountain Railroad and Space Mountain. It was a lot of fun, but we definitely spent our day pursuing kid-friendly rides that we could all enjoy together.
We were watching the wait times on the Disney app throughout the day, and in the early afternoon, we saw that the wait at Haunted Mansion was only 25 minutes (one of the shortest waits in the park). Remembering it as a ride we’ve always enjoyed, we headed over to Liberty Square to get in line.
While we were in line, we saw the black hearse and “ghost horse” display out front. Isaac asked me what it was, so I was trying to explain to him that it was a pretend display of a car they used when people passed away. As I told him, I couldn’t help but think of the “white car” (as Isaac calls it) that took Benny away the last time we saw him.
As we passed the display (since thankfully the line was moving fairly quickly with not a lot of downtime, which was much appreciated with our young babies), the sight made me cringe a bit and even more so as I tried to explain it to my sweet son. I almost told Tom I didn’t want us to go on the ride because of the reaction I was having. It just didn’t feel right. But I didn’t and in a few minutes, we’d made it to the front of the line and onto the ride.
About thirty seconds in, the ride paused and we were sitting there in the dark with some of the very iconic Haunted Mansion decorations all around us and the creepy narrator’s voice rasping at us from the speakers in our little “doom buggy.” In that moment, I wondered if it was a good idea to bring the babies on this ride or if we were setting ourselves up for sleepless nights to come when the babies had nightmares about what they’d seen. I tried to offset the darkness by explaining to them some of the decorations in a really upbeat voice and in really positive (and intentionally incorrect) ways. It seemed to work, and we made it through the rest of the ride without incident.
When we were going through the ride and as we exited the attraction, I couldn’t help but experience such a strong and unexpected reaction. I didn’t like one bit that it was such a dark ride. I didn’t like that it portrayed death in such a negative way. I actually hated the way it made ghosts appear creepy and scary. The parts where they have figures trying to come up out of the ground from their graves felt like a punch in the gut. The part in the end where they say something along the lines of “come back soon – we’re dying to see you” made my heart sink, because the only thing that stands between me seeing my boy again is dying. It all just felt so awful to me, in a way I was not prepared for.
Being on the Haunted Mansion ride made me realize just how much my perspective on these things has changed. I’ve always been a fan of Halloween and the fun and spooky side of all the darkness. I’ve always loved the Haunted Mansion ride and other rides like it. But not anymore. I don’t want any part of it. I don’t want the creepy, scary portrayals of death. I don’t want the darkness that people connect with death and dying. While we’ve certainly had our dark moments since Benny passed away, death has taken on new meaning for us in recent months and surprisingly become more light-filled than we could ever have imagined, in a way that honestly made me cringe at what I felt and saw on this silly Disney attraction.
We’ve been trying to teach our sweet babies over the past few months that Benny is in heaven and that he will be their guardian angel to watch over and help them throughout their lives. So, I never EVER want the idea of ghosts to be scary for my sweet babies, because I don’t want Benny to feel scary. I want Benny to feel like an angel to them, not a ghost, even though it’s essentially the same thing. I don’t want them to fear death or be frightened by circumstances associated with death, because I don’t want Benny’s memory to scare them. I just don’t want death and ghosts to be dark, because for our family over the past few months, they’ve been anything but. Our angel Benny fills our lives with so much light and goodness, and it’s simply been a miracle.
I’m not sure how I’ll feel when Halloween rolls around this year. It’s always been such a fun holiday, but I wonder if it will feel different this year. Just like so many other things that just…feel…different now. But who knows. Time, as I mentioned, has been doing some pretty interesting things lately and I certainly am not capable of predicting what’s to come or how I’ll feel. But, I do anticipate after this tiny experience at the Haunted Mansion that it may look different for our family from now on. I still want to make it a fun holiday, but hopefully we’ll be able to find a way to celebrate the fun without the fright, the death without the darkness, and the spooks without the scary.
We loved spending our family’s special day in Disney World. We made memories together as we laughed and walked and played and waited and ate and enjoyed. The babies were star-struck when they saw Mickey and Minnie. Experiencing Disney through our babies’ eyes made it truly magical. Even though the Haunted Mansion was a blip in an otherwise wonderful day, it was a dream come true to spend time having fun with the people I love most – which most definitely made it the happiest place on earth for this lucky mama.
So happy you were able to have a fun getaway!