Well its midnight and I have contemplated off and on all day what this day would have ,should have, looked like for you , for us. As i awoke this morning i day dreamed that maybe you would have taken Sophy for a walk and started getting ready for your big night ,your dad would make you pancakes for breakfast and we would present you with a beautiful ring or something else significant, maybe a camera because your photography skills had really taken off, Brittanny would hand you beaded friendship bracelet which you would have put on to make her happy. Maybe you would have had some friends over had a swim and hot tub before helping eachother with hair and make up , i would have brought you all your favourite foods and maybe your dad would have wandered in off and on from the garage occassionally telling you how pretty you looked, maybe you'd be telling your sisters to get lost but they would be wanting to watch in awe of their big sis. Then it would be time to get your dress on, the one your sisters and i went dream grad dress shopping for , it was so pretty , like a rainbow. It would be time to have maybe some more friends over, we would talk with the ohter parents about how fast time has gone and how we recalled each of your preschhol days and each of your fututre plans, how we would take a million pictures and videos , some by the rose bush , some by what is now your garden , some with the citizenhsip scholarship i know you would have won ., pictures with me and your dad and some begrundignly with your sisters and of course some of you being silly. Soon it would be time to say goodbye, maybe you had a date or maybe you just decided to hang with your friends , either way i know there would be a boy who couldn't wait to dance with you tonight, maybe he bought you a beautiful white corsage. Your dad would read you the riot act and make you promise him the moon and the stars before letting you go. We'd wait all night to make sure you got home safe but we know what a good kid you are and how much fun you create with out anything dangerous, you'd phone us once or twice or maybe you'd forget as you always seemed to. I know you'd eat lots at the banquet and not care what anyone thought. You'd dance with your friends and maybe that special boy who was honoured to have you on his arm because you were the most beautiful girl there.As tomboy and jeans and tshirt as you normally are this night you were a princess. You'd come bounding in the door at a fairly decent hour maybe having recieved a kiss goodnight from that special boy , you'd tell us all about your night and you'd be giggling through the silly antics. Your dad would kiss you on the forehead and tell you how proud he was of you , how beautiful you looked and ask you to go fishing tomorrow, he would go to bed thankful you were home safe . I would sit with you and watch you as the night spun through your head and wonder where you go from here , imagining the next exciting steps in your life , i would kiss you on the forehead and tell you how proud i was of you and how beautiful you looked as you lie your head on your pillow and drift off to sleep waiting for tomorrow. I would pour myself a cup of tea head off to bed and lie my head on my pillow and thank God my daughter is safe.
Okay well sometimes life doesn't go as planned and as i walked outside just before writing this to lock the door a beautiful gold butterfly flew towards me into the light of the door just to say goodnight. I am off to bed now and as i lie my head down on my pillow i will thank God my daughter is safe
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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