as looking at the date of my last blog and realized i hadn't written
in a while ..hence the mood i've been in lately i guess , always
looking for external circumstances and usually look up to the night sky
and blame it on the full moon, but i don't think there has been one
lately so i can only chalk it up to this time of year. If i were more
of a Black Friday shopper i could wrangle all this impending season has
to offer and head out for some retail therapy , but i'm not and somehow
goes against my new found peace in minimalist thinking , but oh how i
miss the little fix i get from purging through plastic.
That
being said going to the gym , keeping busy, planning
,organizing,working really does nothing to ease this time time of year
or somehow invade my preoccupation of re-living circumstances which
took over our lives 4 years ago ...four years...blows me away , i think
of the naivety we were living in these few short weeks prior to Dec 16
and long for oblivion we once lived in. I miss the days of my head
buried in the sand where "bad things didn't happen to good people" and
my faith went untested, which brings me to my point ... a few days ago
a friend had told me that a friend of hers was reading my blog, i
always get this wierd feeling when strangers read my blog , kinda like
someone going through your garbage, my only hope is that they find
something they can use amongst the dirt and mess. Anyways this person ,
maybe a non-believer , i don;'t know, said to friend " what does she
say now about the last line in her opening blog (the preface")my friend
politely said well she wrote it after Ashley passed away so i guess she
still has faith. I actually had to go back to the opening blog to see
what they were talking about ...the last line says something like " i
knew at that moment who and what we needed , would he be willing to
listen" Folks i have to make this as clear as possible because if you
are struggling with how this can be possible let me tell you it was an
all and out battle for me to get to this point . As you may have read i
did not always grow up with faith and to tell you the truth i fought to
hang on to whatever faith was during this whole ordeal, often trying
anything and everything to find understanding in all this, i looked at
healers, meditation , chinese herbalists, a buddhist monk , lights and
crystals etc even mistankingly assuming Dr's were gods , THEY ARE NOT!
, and should not have this burden placed upon them , as much as
Ashley's Dr and i battled it out at times , never should i have placed
the inordinate task or miracle worker on him. It is only through
understanding that God answers all prayers but that sometimes the
answer is "no " did i actually come to peace and realize that somehow
some way this will all work out in the end if my faith stays
faithful..it was only by grace i was allowed to have this feeliing
...that's all i can call it ...a feeling , a new feeling , one that
replaced complete and utter despair and hopelessness. Faith is defined
as "being sure of what we hoped for and certain of what we do not see"
i am sure there are caveats in there ...we cannot assume our faith will
assure us of winning the lottery or having our "wishes " granted...God
is not our personal genie it is a belief that what we hoped for, will
be, even if we cannot see it , however it has to somehow align with HIs
will or purpose . So faith can go from asking God to cure my daughter
, being assured he will, but being ok with it in whatever form that
takes. Is she cured , free of pain , at peace .. i know it, i can't see
it it , but i know it,it just didn't happen here on earth. There are so
many unanswered questions and maybe it will stay like that no matter
how much i search and build faith and i suppose i have to be content
with that for now and like i've said before when push comes to shove
and your faith is tested you better know where the hell you are going
or what and who you're going to drop to your knees to and ask for
strength, comfort peace ...and if you don't it wll hit you like a tonne
of bricks ...do i think God or Jesus did this to test my faith ,
absolutely not , i believe in a more compassionate God than that, but
do i believe there is evil in this world in the form of many things
(cancer included) that put you to the test ...yes.... undoubtedly...
then you take that faith mix it with compassion and pass it on to the
next person who needs it. There is unfairness all around , close to
home , far away .it's the corrupt world we live in FOR NOW ,it is not
fair that a man who worked hard his whole life has recently passed
and left his wife and son to bear his loss ,it is not fair that the young
lady living with us was handed the cards she was dealt and never really
experienced a loving family already dealing with lonliness at such a
young age, or that a young boy from the high school was so depressed
his only answer was seemingly suicide...tragic. That whole in your
life... that empty feeling... can be filled, i guess we need to be
careful of what we fill it with.
I must say that it is kind of an
exciting year in our house, Christy is graduating this year and i am
enjoying it , we missed out on all that when Ashley was sick . i so
wanted to see her graduate and felt so ripped off when i was on the
wrong side of the stage at her graduation(handing out her memorial
scholarship) faith in knowing she is beyond earthly treasures but oh
how i am soaking it up right now ..was exciting watching her get her
grad photos , yes i went with her, photographer probs thought i was an
idiot , but i held back the tears and was just so happy for this normal
teenage moment ,Christy has crossed the threshold of Ashleys age when
she passed so everything is so new ( attitudes included ) but i am
loving it , she has her final payment for her trip to Greece so now
its grad dress and luggage shopping ...plastic purging via christy
..yay!
Stefanny and Christy are working alongside each other in
the fast food biz ...i won't even go into the details of how that plays
out in this family , lets just say Christy has taken the role of older
sister to a new level ..ugh! Somehow i believe it goes a little
something like this ...Christy sweetly smiling and taking customer's
order ...relaying it back to Stefanny and telling her to "get a move on"
Britt
, my little Britt, who keeps us all grounded and giggling...received
her art work in this years kids cancer calendar.. she is so
proud...happy to have her BFF home from 9 days of holidays , loved
their reunion big hugs , wrestling on the floor like 2 puppies and
right back into the world of imagination ....love it, except that i can
see them advancing to the next level , BOYS..ugh , still kind at that
love hate thing but with this impending grade 5 dance i can hear all
the snickers and giggling and " i need a new dress but i'd rather wear
jeans " ...."oh girls stay young for just a little longer" , as far as
i recall boys are yucky , pesty and nasty at that age ...but what do i
know.
The Journey of a butterfly...Ashleys life has become symbolic of a butterfly, peaceful beautiful and free to fly where the wind takes her. We have a white butterfly that flies around us in the garden in the springtime where the other girls play. Irish folklore tells us that a white butterfly is the rebirth of a deceased child's soul reborn into something even more beautiful than before...our butterfly
June 29 1992 - February 16 2009
Welcome to the Journey of a Butterfly
We invite you to follow along one family's journey through grief and loss, one brave young girl's journey through faith and inspiration, this is not a blog to convert anyone , nor is it a blog about fundraising , it is what i hope will reach another family on a similar journey, we are not experts , i could not give you a magic remedy for how one gets through disease and devestation but it is our story , sometimes gut wrenching other time heartwarming and all of the time, i guarantee, very real. We are not perfect, we struggle daily and i think that the more we connect to one another the more we understand what this journey through life is all about . Sometimes that path is bumpy and we fall down, sometimes we sit and stop a while,or take a step back and other times we pound our fists on the pavement like a lunatic , still other times we find ourselves picking eachother up dusting eachother off and walking alongside them even if only for short time. This blog is dedicated to Ashley , her sisters and every single angel that picked us up along this road.
This is an introduction to the beginning and middle part of our journey the specific blogs are more indepth , the end...well there will never be an end to this journey i've come to realize that , not on this earth, for now we just assimilate it into our life like a hole , a missing limb, a continous ache that you just learn to live with.
When Ashley was about 12 years old she asked if she could go to youth group at a local church , i didn't have any church upbringing but know i craved it throughout my life , this was a rare opportunity and i recognized that if i didn't embrace it now she may lose her interst in it very quickly and beocme a jaded, cynical, stubborn person like her mom. My husband grew up in a very religious (shove it down your throat) kinda religion( i wont mention any names)or maybe it was the way he was raised ? Anyways i encouraged her to go because the community we had moved to embraced this kinda thing so i thought why not? Naturally and shortly after she started attending she was soon encouraging us to go , she had made quite a leadership name for herself there , pionner leader , sunday school helper etc, i was comfortable for the first time in my life going to a church, maybe it was the first word that greeted you as you walked in..."belong" maybe it was because they embraced community and outreach service in our city , dont know, but soon found it very therapeutic, cheaper than a shrink, and our other 3 girls jumped on board pretty quickly, my husband well... a work in progress , he communes with God in a fishing boat he says , although makes many efforts to go even if just for good way to start the week, i was still cynical , felt i wasnt holy enough but went anyways.
Ashley was scheduled to sing a solo in the church choir Dec 16 2007 , i was scared for her, i was sure she got her singing skills from me which was nil at best. She sang beautifully and you couldnt tell she had been complaining of cramps , something i chalked up to girls stuff/growing pains for a couple weeks off and on, she was an active healthy girl. When the performnce was done we got our christmas tree and i took her to the clinic to have it checked out before Christmas , they sent us to our local hosptial for tests , i was worried it was appendix. Darcy, my husband left the hosptial to go pick up our other 3 girls from friends houses , i caught the doctor in the ahallways and asked if the ulstrasound pictures were back, i remember having eye contact with Ashley only feet away from me but far enough away for her not to hear the doctor to so impassionaltely say "its not appendix, it looks like cancer", i have to stop as i write this because it is still one of the 2 biggest shocks in my entire life, i think i ran down the hallways screaming with no sound coming from my throat and not knowing where i was running . I phoned Darcy and words didnt come out of my mouth. Before I knew it we were at out local Childrens Hospital(100km away) meeting oncologiosts , being give an "oncology team" which consisted of a primary nurse, a social worker, a main oncologist and a shrink....wait a minute ...what is an oncologist? yep, a cancer doctor, this was the real thing . we waited 4 days to find out what type we were dealing with ... it was curable 90 % even though she was stage 4 , how the hell can my kid have stage 4 cancer and only a few cramps , it was mind bending. We were thrown stright into a world so foriegn to us , everything stopped ..jobs ..PAC meetings ,carppoling and yes even some friends who"couldn't handle it" it was no longer our own beds , our own home, our own anything. Treatments and life became unbearable , the 90% cure rate was not looking good at any stage throughout our journey , it seemd to be always full of negative news to the point where i couldnt stand the face of her oncologist , it nearly made me want to vomit everytime i saw him...The words they briefed us on as we began this mind altering path was " one of you will grieve through this process and no matter the out come the other will grieve after " they couldn't have been more right.......Ashley insisted on going to church on Christmas eve, two nights before she was to start chemo at the end of the service our pastor came to pray with us , i didn't know many people in the church , but wow did they know Ashley, when we rose our heads from bowing in prayer the whole congregation was surrounding us , i knew at that moment who i was going to need to get me through this ...would he be willing to listen to me...
