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, May 17, 2010


life with the loweys" moment
Sunday, July 13, 2008 at 12:39am | Edit Note | Delete
Wow i can't believe its July already , we are coming up to 7 months since our lives did the belly flop. I have been away from my job for about 210 days. Some people may think of that as a welcomed vacation, i on the other hand, very much enjoyed my job i felt much purpose form my work and derived even more pleasure form the amazing people i work with and they have all been so wonderful at keeping me in the loop as to the goins-on at work. It is truly a nurturing place to work despite some of the work that has to be done there.
The one thing i miss most about work is sharing my family stories in the lunchrooom. When i first began working for family education/services 6 years ago i didn't dare share some of the wacky crazy things my family would do , i just wasn't sure how it would be revccieved in an enviornment that strives for family function and peace. That is not to say that our family is a bunch of loonatics, but come on if you know our family you know the stuff im talking about ,just that stuff they do because they are so comfortable doing it. As my years pssed at ACS i began to see how normal and real our family is and that the folks i work with revelled in my stories because they had "all been there , done that" and they were getting pure joy out of watching someone else go through something they could now look back at and laugh about(how quickly they forgot that teenagers and two year olds weren't always so cute) many of them are grandparents now, how can you tell.
Anyways this is one of those stories that i will imagine telling in the lunchroom . Ashley had to go into the hospital last Friday and i had a wierd feeling that she might be getting a cold and that if history were to repeat itself we may be there for 10 days or so.
Ashley says to Darcy "dad can you take me so i can drive the car just down the block" (the car is not insured until Ashley gets her learners,she got a little car for her bday, which she will share with her sisters as they come of age) For those of you who know darcy he is a driving stickler , recites driving laws , corrects people for their indiscretions in his head .... he drives and manages drivers for a living so YES he is a driving guru...so his response to Ashley is a long drawn out dictaion of the driving laws and the perils of not conforming to these said laws.I'm thinking" blah blah blah". I try to tlak him into easing up and "its jsut down the block 50 m, whats the biggie. " His rant # 2 "if the police happen to catch ya the...blah blah blah"
I remebered back to his early driving days at 16 and wondered how he could have become so pompius considering his roots. He says "if you want to take her by all means , but i will have no part of contribting to the ..b.blah blah blah" "Fine" being the wannnabe cool mom, i say"come on Ash. i'll take ya" I knew her next few days were gonna suck so what the hell. We get in the car and yes it is a sitcom just getting out of the driveway, and there's darcy waggin his finger..".blah blah blah". We go about 20 yards and yeah what do ya think we see. COPS! uNFRIGGIN BELIEVABLE!Ashley asks "mom are those cops"" holy crap, youve got to be kiddin me " I say . (YOu know how long ive been wanting cops to patrol that area , some unsavouries hanging out there by the park etc etc. And they pick now ...today to surveillance the area).I panickesd i ddidn't know what to do i told Ashey to pull to the curb, now were like 15 feet away form them, now what?, no plates , no license and that stupid finger waggin in the window(no he could not see us from where we were) The only thing i could think of was to tell Ashley to take her wig off just in case.... she complies. I wonder if i can pull a uuee. The cops are looking for something on the ground , in the bush , maybe they won't see us. I switch places with Ashley and i pull a uuueey (uturn), the cops get in the car and follow us , i a m shaking and all i can hear is that stuid law being repalyed in my head and darcys cop-like voice in my head. I just keep saying "oh crap oh crap oh crap" they turn down the street befor mine . Ashley and i breathe a huge sigh of relief , shaking we pull into the driveway, put the club on the steering wheel walk into the house ...Ashley goes straight to her room , i go straight to start in on the dishes to expend nervous energy. Darcy"Well how was the drive?" We both reply.... "fine, just fine"
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