Valentines Day, Loss and Hope

Since I was 7 years old, Valentines Day has been the anniversary for my sister Amy Beth. Amy was born on that day in 1971. She was as normal as her four older brothers and sisters, yet she cried all the time and sharing a bedroom, my living baby doll taught me how to rub someone’s back at a young age. June 9, 1971 she stopped crying. This was before the ambulances came to your home and in a time when one car to each household was commonplace. The doctors called it SIDS. My daughter Alexa kept a picture of Amy on her dresser for the past 5 years. Why? We were rummaging through a box of keepsakes in the attic one day and asked if she could have it. I’ll never know her reason for displaying that picture so proudly, but a copy was buried with my daughter Alexa Rae one year ago this month, when both my teenage children passed on from this life .

The past year has met challenges that make me question who I am. Who am I? The answer is that I don’t truly know. I know who I thought I was, but I don’t know where I’m heading. I should look at life as an adventure. Life hands us all sorts of road bumps to deal with that we have been programmed to fix. In my own unique situation, with the loss of both my children and having been my only children, statistics say that any one person will either commit suicide or be heavily sedated. Me?, I choose to learn. Where does that take me? To the brink of every emotion that exists. How do you absorb that the children you know you would jump off a bridge for, have died. There’s that word….died. The way I see it is that we don’t die, we move on. That’s not something I have learned, that’s something I’ve always believed and trusted. So, there are no true answers. There are no solutions, just actions. So the actions I move forward with are to explore adventures that are rewarding. Rewarding is a personal thing. I listen to folk rewarding themselves with wealth that can cumulate. That to some is a reward. A reward to me is something that enlightens and allows me to be a better person. A better person, there’s a good one. How do we become a better person….I believe simply that we don’t become, we just are a better people by being who we are and not hurting others. So, I felt I may have hurt someone this very morning and I look at the circumstances and become aware that judging ourselves is the root of all evil. By judging my compulsive actions I have caused emotional anguish to only myself. It’s a domino effect in that the circle of emotional turmoil will continue unless I accept my own motives which are to learn, heal and love. It is what it is, the circle of life that we share….some paths cross and others will never. There’s a reason for everything, so we hear. Things we can’t fix, correct or understand and why we should learn from our own unique “this”……but when you stop to think, we do…..and the exploring continues on…..As I think of all the Valentines Days that have passed since…