Educating the Loweys'
Friday, October 3, 2008 at 10:43am | Edit Note | Delete
I got a letter in the mail the other day , it was from Thompson Rivers University the institution in which i have taken many of my online courses. Several years ago i decided to go back to school and get my degree in Social work, i knew it was going to be a long process not to mention a lofty goal, but you know it was part of that superwoman thing. I have to say ive done pretty good , most courses i ve gotten either an A or B and to say that wrapping my head around disciplined study habits came easy especially between changing diapers ,working, housework ...well it was never a strong point in my high school years, socializing took priority.I don't know about you but a degree education was not as highly encouraged when i was going to school as it is today for our children,that seemed to be for the brainiacs and nerds back in the day. Heck, i remember many former students who still contimplated the decision whether to stay in school past the mandatory grade 10.I think i took some courses at my local community college like partying and goofing off 101 etc. Needless to say i was not going to let my children even entertain the idea of anything less than a university education.
I'm probably beginning to sound like i stand over my children and crack the honour roll whip , that is not the case , am i proud when they make honour roll? (more surprised)yeah come on who wouldn't be ... i don't care what anyone says... its a thrill .. an accomplishment, but they are not straight A students they work hard, and yes i do know when their tests are and i do ask them as they walk in the door "how'd you do?" But in the back of my mind there was always something much more important i hoped they would get from school. I was always just as proud of the citiznship awards maybe even more then the academic awards
So needless to say when i recieved my letter in the mail which informed me that the last course I signed up for (which was about the same time ashley was diagnosed).... a course on humanities..human conditon and its effects on the family/world ...resulted in an F ( thats FAIL) i didn't know what to do ...cry my over achieving eyes out or roll on the ground laughing over the irony. I thought to myself in some existential realm "how the hell can anyone say that i have not passed a course on how stress and trauma effects the family" i thought about how the day the dr. told us " were sorry to tell you but your daughter has a rare form of cancer" how i never opened that assigned cardboard textbook again, instead, i picked up an inviisable textbook "big picture" storybook ,one where i was able to do the longest practicum of my life without any choice in the matter.
I started thinking about how this education has effected all of us. i thought back to when Ashley spent most of last semester in the hospital and could barely attend school ,how much she missed school, how schoolwork helped her to feel normal. I remember her wanting to complete a science project while in the hospital, it was to construct a 3d model of A DNA strand. It took her 2 weeks , something that normally would have taken her 1 day to do. She and darcy spent time reading about DNA(do you even rremeber that being a science term when you went to school) and what DNA consisited of , they each constructed their own idea of what the model should look like, they used material from the hospital, a puke tray for the base and tongue depressers for the structure and palydough form the art room for the joints. Ashley could only spend about 15 minutes a day when she wasn't sleeping or sick from chemo. They were both finally complete and i remember walking into the hospital elevator with both models and various dr's. commmenting on what a great DNA strucute it was ( well ahsleys anywyas) I had never been more proud of anything she had ever done before , i knew it wasn't going to be the big elaborate masterpieces some kids would turn in , but I knew nobody had put more blood sweat and tears into their project. When i turned it in ...very very late.. i thought her science teacher was going to start crying, he knew about the labour that had gone into this and when he saw darcys i think it made him laugh. He emailed me her mark 160 /100 , he told me that the education in science she has recieved in treatment should exempt her from any exam(ever)
When stefanny and Brittanny(and britts friend Lex) decided to shave their heads and bravely attend school the next day , i thought about the education in compassion and leadership they didn't get from a worksheet or textbook ,but from real life, i think about christys role and how it has changed and what she has learned about adaptability.
When my kids come home from school now, i ask them how their day was , instead of asking for the tangible results , i ask them were you nice to people today? were people nice to you today? what went really well today? what didn't go so well? what did you learn at recess /lunch today? the answers are quite a bit different then 7/10.
What have i learned ..the list is long,scary and amazing and ever changing but one thing i know for sure is that i didn't fail that course on how stress effects the family.
Thanks for reading
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...
No comments:
Post a Comment