A New Year
Monday, January 11, 2010 at 11:58am | Edit Note | Delete
Usually, just before the clock strikes midnight on December 31 i observe the signs around me looking for clues and tell-tale signs of what the year has in store for me, for example, if i'm celebrating with friends and family and having a festive time i think the year will be full of joy and good feelings , if i happen to have fallen asleep i tend to believe i'm in for more of a restful boring year , (which is just fine some years). I remember way back to New Years eve 1994, I held my new born, who was only a few hours old , it was pretty obvious what the upcoming year was going to bring me that year , diapers, sleepless nights , and joy.
Up until 2007 we spent every new years together with the focus usually being on Christys birthday,however, 2007, found Darcy and Ashley in the hospital where she began her experience with her first round of chemo(not pretty) but we put a positive spin on it saying it was the begining of the fight of our lives "one that would bring upon healing" Last New Years Christy wanted to have a few girls over for a sleepover , there were so many times that year we had to say "no" because of risk of infection that we finally decided that maybe it would be ok. Ashley was fine with the decision after making Christy swear up and down that her "immature friends " would not so much as make a peep towards her room where she was content on being by herself watching her favourite episodes of "House " and "End of my leash" she even asked Darcy and i to just "let her be" with out constant checking ...i agreed and we slipped down the street for a new years drink with our neighbours playing board games. Stefanny joned Christy's party and kept watch over Ashleys "sound barrier", Brit well she was at the neighbours too. As 11:57 approached i quickly gave Darcy a smooch and assured him i'd be back , I ran 4 houses home in the rain and quietly climbed into bed with Ashley who was drifting off from her evening dose of morphene , I carefully thought about how i would envison and verbalize what i thought about the upcoming year. I told Ashley this year will be better , this year you will be healed, this year you will have peace and this year we will be greatful and you will do great things. I told her that we will take care of her and that we'll be with her through it all. Ashley nodded her head and said " i know mom." You may think i promised her things that didn't come true but like i said i chose the words carefully. there is truth and reality in all the words .
As was with Christmas, we again tried not to put too much emphasis on New Years (which was a wonderful ski trip by the way , didnt regret one moment) We celebrated Christys birthday at a restaurant with her BFF and later had the neighbours over for a glass of grapes. They left before midnight, so as new years approached I couldn't help but reflect back on the past year , I know it sounds wierd but I really didn't want it to end, it felt as though time in between was getting greater, further away, "last yearish" i wasn't ready to let go of such a year , the one with the most amount of sadness and the most amount of growth and patience I had ever experienced , guess thats what they call a double edged sword. I tried not to assume what the New year was going to bring in case it was a huge disppointment, just when i thought the 6 funerlas was enough for one year , would this one bring more????i thought to myself "don't let this moment dictate what the year will bring , things can change in an instant , give up control, just let them happen and flow with it and pray its one with less tears. So no big revelations , no signs from above that things will be great....well ....until this weekend, i had a great weekend , went out for dinner on Friday night with some friends and when we got back i checked my Facebook and literally burst to find out that our dear sweet friend Logan, diagnosed 4 and a half years ago with brain cancer... i think like 18 brain tumors... over 100 rounds of chemo, given a life expectancy of 2 weeks at diagnosis received news that her MRI that day came back with no more growth, she has been off chemo for 5 months and although they can't call it remission, it is definitely cause for a celebration for today , for hope.Perhaps their recent house fire which has kept them held up in hotel for 2 months was a sign of old things burning away , the smoke has cleared ,i remember a dr once associating fighting a tumor like a house fire ,first they had to put the fire out (the active tumor ) and then get to the smoke , the embers (the middle of the tumor). Hard to say life will go back to normal, but for now maybe they can exhale and Jen can wear those shoes , the ones the other moms get to wear to the follow-up clinic, the ones she's waited patiently for, the ones that will fit her perfectly because she deserves them.(well we all do but...) Needless to say , my girls were extatic , for us, it was almost as good as ....well you know...
I decided to drag my butt outta bed and attend church this Sunday for the first time back this year , i was hesitant because our regular pastors were away and i wasn't sure i'd get anything out of it because ...well.... i'm under the delusional impression that my pastors sermons are directly for me!! I hope and bet everyone else in church feels the same way , i'm sure that is the gift of a wise pastor. Anyways , he was good, the other pastor i mean, Mike,especially for being so young, I was wondering how his life experience could possibly speak to me , considering he was talking about spiritual healing over physical healing , restoration of a soul and greatness to come and faith and knowing that this world is temporary, which takes me back to the conversation i had with sleepy Ashley on Dec 31 2008 @ 11:59pm.The message was a great way to start the year to not be too wrapped up in the physicallness of this world , physical healing ,for there is so much we cannot see yet its still there , our bodies will fade, some quicker than others, and sometimes this brings on a stronger healing, a spiritual one , one that is beyond what we can see, just know. .Maybe i already knew this maybe i just needed to hear it again,maybe Darcy and i were hearing it for the first time together ,it was healing ,a sign of things to come, for many i hope. Praying for Peace and Healing to everyone
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...
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