Ok ok you'd think that after the year i've had i would have bigger fish to fry ... had gain some perspective on how not to sweat the small stuff.... learned how to be a little more tolerant...but i guess a sign of healing might be to see bits and pieces of yourself slowly emerging or maybe its a true sign of me getting ready to really loose it.Don't worry i have no idea how to use firearms so were still safe, however, that doesn't mean i don't start my mornings out wanting to blow ...wondering what some people use for brains.
My biggest pet peeve...oblivious people!..people that feel they have a sense of entitlement!..that is not to say that i am super enlightened and have it all figured out ..no, i 'm talking about simple understanding of the world around us. I'm not asking or saying we have to know the goals and outcomes of the last G5 summitt or we have to pretend to understand the reason for the whole Iraq state of affairs, what i do think we lack, especially while in our cars , especailly in the morning, especaiily at school drop offs is AWARENESS.
I know were all busy in the morning ,most people's idea of the morning routine is probabaly not as pleasant as we would like it to be especially if you have teenage girls who feel is necessary to stragihten their hair five minutes before school, forgoing breakfast,lunch , organization, or even a simple Good morning. I' remember the days of little ones too, so that was also a cruel laugh at morning bliss.
Since the implementation of middle school, long gone are the days of school drop off being a one stop endeavour...no , now i get to travel to 3 schools , which is actually an improvemnet from when it used to be 4 schools. It seems that although schools are shutting down in record amounts the school parking lot is exploding. Why i have allowed my kids to be driven to school is probably my own fault but its one of those things i used to do for them on my way to work("work"..thats a weird word) so fighting these parking lots has become second nature for me and believe you me its a fight just to get in and then get back out...apparently engineering geniuses got together and oraganized some kind of futile drive thru parking system which resembles a pack of confused meth addicted lab mice trying to frantically beat their heads against a wall to get out of the mind boggling maze designed to trap them in a scientists idea of a no win situation experiment. Now maybe i'm lying too much blame on engineers after all its not necassarily the creators fault its the dummies who dont think the rules apply to them . Case in point, in each of the three schools i drop off at there are drive thru lanes and there are drop off lanes, once you finish dropping your child off in the drop off lane common sense tells us that we put our blinker on to signal that we are entering the drive thru lane and away we go ...in theory . I think what happens is that some people who grew up with too much money ,or think they are so busy and important or that their honkin SUV means "get out of my way " they assume that the rules don't apply to them, now i am no driving expert and i committ infractions all the time but this is down right insane. These people pull right into the middle of the drop off lane (becasue its closer to the entrance of the school) and let their child out , they actually block the people wanting to continue driving through , apparently their children are so so special that they require valet drop off ,their children are so special that they cannot nor should they have to walk one extra unneccessary step , they are so entitled to not get an extra rain drop on their pretty delicate head that their parents have decided to tell their children that their comfort is much more important than the chaos they cause around them, the sense of order they think belongs to other people . These are the same parent s who perpetaute western thinking "we deserve it " we dont deserve it! we don't desrve anything cushy we have here! , we are only privleged to have it , for the most part we dont' "deserve" to have nice cars ,we dont" deserve" to have fancy houses, we don't "deserve" to have extra cirricular activiites , we don't "deserve" to be dropped off any closer to the front steps then anyone else just as those in other countries don't "deserve" to have the attoricities they recieve. We don't "deserve" cleaner water then them , we don't have it becasue we work harder or are better people we are"priveleged mostly because of the stroke of luck of where we were born.
I am ranting , because im hoping that someone will either know what im taking about or use this place for getting out your aggressions because although i sit around in my car wondering why nobody says anything i'm acutley aware of why we dont. the world is too violent with people who think they deserve to be. And it doesn't matter what you say to them anyways , i tried, even politley, the woman in the car just looked at me like i was stupid and said "ahh my son has hockey", (the high school is a hockey school , so i suppose the boy can't nor should he have to carry his hockey bag and extra 3 steps) , the worst is when they sit there and continue to have a conversation with their kids in this lane ...c'mon move your privelged prima dona ass over so the rest of us can get to work(oh yeah , well...when i do go back ) Anyways, just a thought and i feel better ,go ahead agree with me or not ,if you don't i know you're on e of THEM!... lol... what gets you?
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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