First Lady Jill Biden opened up this week about how her family dealt with the death of her and President Joe Biden’s son Beau, who passed away in 2015 after a battle with cancer.
In a piece for Oprah Daily, Jill discussed grief and finding normalcy again after Beau’s death.
“The Monday before Thanksgiving in 2016, Joe and I drove through familiar neighborhoods of gray-blue shingled houses to a cottage not far from the Nantucket Sound,” Jill wrote. “The year before, our family had forgone our yearly Thanksgiving tradition.”
‘Nantucket was just another place to remind us of all that we had lost, like a photograph with Beau’s face cut out. I knew how hard it would be to come back, but this year, the grandkids had asked,” she added. “Thanksgiving was Nantucket. They missed the little shops, the ice cream parlor we always visited, the traditional Friday lunch. They wanted to watch the Christmas tree lighting and wander the cobblestone streets. They wanted to be together and feel normal again. So, Joe and I said yes.”
Jill went on to talk about how very slowly and emotionally her family “fell back into our old routine,” but that being all together and having their love for one another was how they were able to “move forward, day by day.”
“When I was younger and upset, my mother used to tell me, ‘Things will always look better in the morning.’ How many days in those dark months had she been proven wrong? How many times had I awakened from a dream, only to realize my child isn’t back, feeling like we’ve lost him all over again?” she wrote. “Yet, she was also right. The sun keeps coming up, and the spring keeps coming back. The world turns, and each morning brings you gifts of the life that continues: coffee with the man who’s loved you through better and beyond worse; full dinner tables with flickering candles and long conversations; grandchildren who pull you back to yourself and your family, even when it’s the last thing you think you want.”
In the end, Jill said she’s learned that, “At some point in our lives, we will all be broken and bruised — but we are not alone. We find joy together. We persevere together.”
“And together, we are so much more resilient than we know,” she added.
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