Original written date dec 16 2012
Time and Faith and Hope and a Bunch of other Stuff
Time seems to be spinning at a new rate or what they say about
getting older and time is really true because i can't seem to keep up ,
maybe i just don't want to because i don't really like the deception of
time lately. Yes , i know that this time of year does a little number on
my sanity , perhaps even more this year as we recently reached the 5
year mark of Ashley's diagnosis...5YEARS , what ??? As i sat around on
Dec 16 feeling a bit sorry for myself i couldn't help but think of 20
new members inducted into the grieving parents club, allbeit very
different circumstances...i watched the President and various clergy
address the grief in Newtown and thought about the various ways evil in
this world snatch our children away from us , they come in different
forms i suppose . gun wielding disturbed individuals , poverty ,
illness, regardless they all take large numbers of children every year
and it is unfortunately something i don't think is necessarily going to
go away in our lifetime . I wonder how these families are going to get
through this, especially this time of year which kinda brings me to my
point about setting Christmas "frivolousness" so far up on a pedestal
that its a huge fall down when celebrating seems impossible for whatever
reason at some point in your life, just enjoy the closeness of family ,
the reverence of the simple message and don't get to wrapped up in what
doesn't or shouldn't belong.I was actually surprised to see how
spiritual / religious North America or maybe just this small town
appeared to be, maybe they were in the middle of some bible belt , some
unsuspecting sweet little place where evil normally doesn't enter,
apparently evil knows no bounds ...but neither does light ...i'm glad
were still looking for Good and God amongst the darkness and holding out
hope for a time and place that are beyond this earthly realm as we know
it now , a place where these children will walk and play and run and
giggle without a care , for now their parents are left attempting to
convince the siblings left behind that there's no such thing as
monsters. There are monsters little ones , we can call them murderers ,
guns , mental illness, cancer , terrorism , whatever and we can fight
against it (and we should ) remembering that it unfortunately in this
world just takes on a different form , because it is evil and that's
what evil does... it slaps us upside our finite minds and catches us
unprepared and leaves us craving for something, we need to be careful
because evil wants us to crave more evil , light and goodness wants us
to remember we have faith and hope in a something bigger and better...
we just can't see his face and can't personally have him answer our
questions right this minute , it is a fallen world for now, the result
of free will ,but a time will come when we are all reunited , no more
tears , no more pain , sorrow or suffering , it is written.
Never really sure whether i'm looking forward to a new year or not ,
we think "this year's gotta be better than the last" but who know's,
it's only a date that changes so i guess it's what you make it and
besides a continuing journey in this weird road it was good mixed with
bad, guess that's what they call life , who gets to live without bad ???
no one escapes i guess , some people's "bad " just has a different
definition sometimes ( can be frustrating ). We lost Darcy's dad a few
weeks ago so yeah some bad mixed in with the good of Ashley's book "The
Golden Butterfly " reaching special places and people...speaking of
which, the book is now available at The House of James in Abbotsford,
exciting. When i was in grade 2 we had to write this little book called
"Fortunately , Unfortunately " each page would outline a "fortunately
"statement negated on the next page by an "unfortunately " statement ,
it actually got quite annoying and minotinous ...life though, right? So
here goes ...Fortunately we have 2 L drivers, so soon i won't be a taxi
..unfortunately new drivers can get the gas mixed up with the brake
resulting in an uprooted tree and serious front end damage...fortunately
everyone was ok . Unfortunately serious cuts to Social Service
programs...Fortunately i still have "at least" a p/t job, able to pay
the 2 ICBC deductibles ...yes i said 2 , i had a little incident with
the courtesy car , cracked the bumper , forgot i wasn't driving my
truck....lol.
Guess this is a version of staying positive, having hope , faith and
knowing "this to shall pass" ....a gift of time i guess. May this gift
of time be a blessing to you this year.
Lori
Peace ,
Lori
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...
