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, September 25, 2017

Mundane-ness ( word?)

I’m off this week and when i say off, i mean it, in all sense of the word. I finally took a week off of work , Darcy is away which means there ain’t much cookin goin on around here with just me and Britt home. I’m gettin caught up on all those “i’ll do it laters” they are the mundane things you say you’re going to get to later but really when that later comes it’s just a big pile of who the hell cares, this should be a week of wanna’s not shoulda’s, not sayin i can’t do my wanna’s when Darcy is home but for some reason i get sidetracked and let’s face it our wanna’s dont always mesh and i am 100% ok in saying that. After 28 years of marriage i have come to believe that while we have many things in common there are many things that we are uniquely separate in , case in point , he’s hunting , 2 weeks in the bush , seriously i could not think of anything i’d rather do less but it’s what gives him peace and i guess writing is what gives me peace or at least a place to hunt and gather my thoughts , maybe not so diff after all, because aren’t we all just searching for peace ...
Beginning to think that peace is becoming an elusive concept let alone an ability with the state the world is in , forgive me for getting too broad in my subject matter , I’m not gonna get all “ I just want world peace , beauty pageanty” I think the world has reached a bit of a climactic point that may not reverse itself anytime soon and we can protest and fight against it ,but, what will be ,may just be . It’s almost scary to think our actions can change everything or anything because when we can’t change the thing that’s going to inevitably happen it can be a giant fall from “ if you believe it you receive it “ damaging to one’s own belief in mortality...like trying to glue leaves back on to a tree in the Fall. I used to think that if i prayed hard enough or thought positively enough then i could change outcomes , i was wrong and it flies back to where does “hope “ fall into all this and why am i even talking about this ...because as global as the big issues are in the world right now there are everyday unpeaceful things happening around us and to us and like the butterfly effect, it ripples outward and we have a choice on how to respond to that ripple . I cannot think of a time or maybe i’m just so meshed in the world of cancer or that it’s Childhood Cancer month or that it is everywhere you turn and is such a devastating word , one cannot help but contemplate the ramifications of hearing that word, especially concerning those so very close to us. Life hangs in a balance for those waiting news and test results and decisions to be made ( this can be true for all diseases and calamities).
Often i get asked if i have come to peace with what we have gone through , it is a loaded question and i guess i have to guage my audience and i don’t expect anyone to fully appreciate what i’m saying but there were times in our journey that peace was the feeling of having one more day and no bad news today... somehow now, it’s stupid, peace has become “did i pay that bill , how are we going to save for retirement etc “and i hate that it has become my sense of peace because when i was in the thick of it peace truly was the “ we have today” , God has granted maybe one more moment together ...peace in regular life is often just an illusion , you think you have it until something bad happens and then things ain’t so peaceful anymore , everything is temporary everything fades , you only have this one moment , the one you’re in (ugh i don’t want to get all Eckhart Tolle either). Sometimes life is just getting through one more disastrous moment and other times it is just getting through one more normal moment . On the other side of the worst possible moments in this life i don’t really know , i just know that somehow we got through it , God did not grant my wish but He did give me the tools i needed to cope , He gave me a clarity , the right people , a bit of an awareness to the things around me and a hope in something i cannot see right now and that’s ok, because i think that is the pure definition of faith and when things are bogging me down , the things that wont matter a year form now i have the ability to go back and recall. By no means am i saying that disastrous times is where you find the most peace , Gawd no , those times are heart racing, blood pumping, wish i would wake up from this nightmare times, it is only after that you realize that you got down to the business of simplifying what really mattered , pursued that and in turn maybe in the end whichever way life goes that will be the peace in it all . Life doesn't have to be about fulfilling what the world tells you your dreams are, it is trying to live on a higher human platform of awareness and what can happen in the blink of an eye , what can slap me upside my complaisant puney self and open my eyes to things i’d be much more comfortable not seeing . I guess it’s a choice , you wanna be comfortable or you wanna be human , being human is often times living with the absence of peace but looking back on it finding peace in the decisions you made in that time and lifting one another up. In a strange way comfort/peace can be found in knowing that there is likely someone who has it harder than i do today ,no matter what the situation is, yet not trying to take away from someone’s worst possible day.
I sit here in my quiet, very quiet home, listening to Pachabel’s Cannon and peace has washed over me and not because i know i’m getting the bed to myself tonight but because it’s one of those mundane moments, realizing it could change in a moment , that i am acutely aware of those who are not having a peaceful moment and want so desperately to cut off a slice of my mundane-ness for them until they get a little break to strengthen them again. Many prayers, deep soul prayers for those that can’t find peace today, you are not alone.

Peace,
Lori
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