June 29 1992 - February 16 2009

Welcome to the Journey of a Butterfly

Welcome to Ashleys Journey,

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...

Monday, March 26, 2012

Home


Well, I am happy to report that Christy made it home from Europe safe and sound, not to say that sending her off was an easy task , there were times i wanted to just say "stay home , you have plenty of years to travel , maybe when i'm long gone " but it was an opportunity to venture off and try something new, one of those things you wish you had done when you were young but never did, so you live it vicariously through your children. Darcy required some convincing , he has such a tough time with stuff like that so when Christy texted him at work to tell him she was stuck in some random  elevator in Greece i think it donned on him that he can't do much from here and that he has to let her figure things out on her own, she and the 6 other girls figured it out pretty quickly ...ah cutting of the apron strings....not an easy task. No worn out credit card and a safe trip home despite the Air Canada walk out and she is back to normal. Got me thinking how incredibly technological our world has become, years ago , we may have received a quick phone call to say they arrived safely and maybe a postcard arriving a day or two before their return , but today we have a little thing called facetime , i swear i saw this on a Jetsons episode when i was a kid, a quick click of a button on her ipod and we are communicating with her face to face in real time on Darcy's iphone, we could actually lay eyes on her and be reassured she is doing ok , and hey i actually got to see Turkey and Greece etc with my own eyes , mind you it was from her balcony but whatever it will have to do for now, now if only they could invent this technology to work from Heaven , hhmmm how wonderful that would be ,could you just imagine. i have put this trip of hers into that context several times and it especially hit me at the airport...it felt like we hadn't hugged her or cuddled her in so long so of course we are the first parents at the airport anxcious for her to get home , i imagine the sceanario quite similar to when we see Ashley again , hearing that the time has arrived,she has landed ,waiting amongst others who also wait for the return of their loved ones ,,,swooping in from above ,standing at the gate with so much anticipation, waiting and   watching the streamline of people one by one walking down the long corridor wondering when their turn will be , smiling, rejoicing for those who are before you , i pray its done in alphabetical order , by first name , cause family(last) names finally wont make a lick of difference anymore. At last your turn has arrived , that moment you see their face and can touch them again , the tears are gone , the worries are gone , the baggage doesn't need to be claimed it stays on that revolving belt never to be seen again , it is finished , done, we can go home.
Sometimes our children will beg to go somewhere, some far off land. some new adventure, some time and space were not to sure of , we know it might be best for them but for us were not so sure, but we let them go, trust, and know that they will all be home someday and what a day that was/will be.
Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

Followers