Last Epic Update of 2023
Email sent 10.29.23 | 10 months 19 days
Hello Beautifuls,
Lucky you, this email reads like an annual Christmas letter, but you’ll receive these sprinkled throughout the year. As we head into the season of waning light after a year of surviving the “firsts”, I’m writing on my first birthday without Miles. Mine being the last of our family birthdays. We’ll take that as cause for quiet celebration as the year comes to a close and we find our way to emotional hybernation. It’s been an eternity in the three short months since we’ve written last. The only thing that has remained the same as the fact that we’re all still here. Including Miles. We are just learning how to how to find each other differently.
I have started a new job this month (which I love) and David has taken a pause from his job (which we all love) to take a deep breath, travel to the wilderness with Miles and work on side projects locally. Izzy is still the nanny of the century for Frances with a new addition of precious baby Jude. She’s also kicking her brain synapses into gear, taking classes to head towards her teaching credential.
Speaking of holidays, we’re just skipping former traditions for the unforeseeable future. Too weird and overwhelming. We’re starting with a fresh do over. Imagine the holidays without emotional expectation? That’s what we’re trying to do. It’s first day of school vibes including the potential horror of forgetting your locker combination while completely naked. The hope is when times get weird for us, we’ll just look to the trees.
Speaking of trees, and soil and growth, we are continuing to share Miles with the world and to grow in all ways that we can with his soul soil. Sowing the seeds of hope and future one planting or placement at a time. I found this news article which distills the experience to a nice enough soundbite or you can follow the link on Miles’ obituary at Earthfuneral to learn more about the process. Please do reach out if you’d like to have some soil to embark on your adventure with him. Website, stories and photos on this topic to follow!
We found the strength this month to build an alter for Miles at our community treasure The Mail Depot in town. Miles is alongside dear Georgia Pellkofer, Phoebe Washer and other beautiful souls. You can also find him at the Heebe Jeebe community alter. Please visit if you are in town for Dia de Los Muertos.
So many magical moments have happened where we have found a connection with our beautiful Miles. I’ll share a few stories here but must add, with great tenderness, I would love to share more if anyone wants to dive deeper. I’m an over sharer when it comes to stories about Miles so be prepared with extra time.
In July we received an email and a personal visit from a few dear hearts who were Miles’ former camp counselors at the magnificent Cottonwood Gulch. An incredible camp that found its way to us when Miles needed it the most. Their newsletter tribute to him below:
From Cass his camp leader:
"I wanted to share with you some words- well, a word, from Miles that I stumbled upon this summer. On a hike up to our "grandmother tree", a giant Alligator Juniper that we estimate to be 800-1200 years old, a trekker found an old water bottle. I remembered that that was a geocache we had established in 2013, and started flipping through the notebook inside, looking for familiar names. This page struck me. It was what I needed to hear this summer, and such an apt reminder while standing under this gorgeous being who has seen hundreds of years of existence. His presence exists here, where he still reminds us to just Chill.”
Miles spoke of this tree to us and the power of their journey to get there. A wiser message from Miles at this time I couldn’t imagine.
The Miles Kintz Memorial Scholarship is humming and growing. I continue to hear of the new additions including some friends who held a concert this weekend with plans to donate the proceeds. It’s a generosity of great magnitude and thank you all dearly for your continued contributions! Bernie consistently fills our world with beautiful dance and she and I are working closely together for the next round of disbursement. Please stay tuned for more news soon.
On this continued journey to grow through grief, the resources I find are not on a narrow path. Nor can I plan when the lessons are to find their resting place in our gentle hearts. A few months back I found this documentary “A Love That Never Dies . Warning, It’s painfully painful and full of pain. So there’s that. For me, seeing the journey of child loss through others eyes has been a raw and somewhat recalibrating, comfort. This guided meditation brought me so close to Miles in one of my 4 am wake up calls. Equitable to conjuring a dream. I hear there is a movie released in theaters this week “After Death” I cannot speak to it yet, but when the strength is found, I plan to watch.
We’ve evolved incrementally although the grief still sits with us like a low fog. It’s now part of our forever landscape and always will be. Sometimes it rises over head with a weight that is knee crippling and other days it doesn’t get in the way of our view of the sunset at all. It’s with our open hearts that we wait for those days when the fog and clouds give us the skies of glory. It is then that we feel our closest to him.
As we approach the anniversary of Miles’ car accident, (a day we still cannot even begin tho think about how we will process). There is already in place a global event which we can all participate. A candle lighting ceremony on December 10th through The Compassionate Friends https://www.compassionatefriends.org/wcl. A wave of t]light to travel the globe, one time zone at a time, for all of our loved ones.
Lastly, Please let me know if you have someone in your arms reach who is also experiencing a child loss and I’d be more than happy to share some of my resources which I found to be excruciatingly valuable. At the end of the day, finding our humor (although this email isn’t very funny), telling stories, finding purpose in our work, growing Miles' soil and spending our days in ways in which our beautiful boy would take a shiney look on us is our daily goal. Izzy, Miles, David and I are all so tightly woven together, same journey, different paths all leading to the peace we feel in our love. Miles is everywhere.
With so much love and gratitude,
Laura,Izzy,David and Miles
