As Kids...

 

 

As kids we ran around a great neighborhood with 4 friends plus about 4 more that made a group that to this day still makes me laugh and smile in remembrance.  3 of the girls I am still in contact with even if it is not every day. 

We have all had tragedies.  Deaths, divorce….. loss……..

3 of my friends have lost a child, I lost my step son but somehow…. That just doesn’t seem the same.  Matter of fact, it isn’t.  loss is loss…. And forgive me for this but a mother’s loss, I believe, cannot come close to anything else.  Our children… ours…. We should not have to bury them.  Well I found out late yesterday that one of these precious woman who lost her young daughter to a car accident several years ago will now bury her second.   A few days ago her oldest and only daughter slumped over dead.  She is on a breathing machine as they harvest her organs.  That to me would be an awful thing to live through as well….. 

It seems, to me, there isn’t any good news coming around these days which just breaks my heart.  One of these woman I call my friend still has not only buried her youngest years ago but her middle child is sitting in a jail and although it is a a shoplifting charge… it masked a larger problem.  Drug abuse… it will kill her if she does not see… the… truth…..

 

So my heart breaks.  I say prayers for these families.  I catch my own breath thinking ‘what if’.. God.. where are you?  This precious daughter that is donating her organs, lying in state has 3 children; young children and no husband.   My childhood friend will be raising these kids…… God where are you?

 

I reflect on how wound up in fear I have become and over what?  Finances?  Relationships?  And then I hear this……..  Perspective….

 

I cry for my own family and what we go through and forget to acknowledge the good; and there is some.  I grieve for family choices and ask not to be consumed by their choices; stepping back to keep from being consumed as well.

 

Then I think of ‘T’.  His sweet smile, awesome laugh.  And I am filled with warmth and joy and while that doesn’t erase the fear, sadness of life, it brings me to a sweet place for a moment and remember that the circle of life sucks……so love as you can, where you can…. We truly do not get a second chance..