Thursday 25 October 2012

Losing a Friend, and the Lessons I Learned!


Sometimes people come into our lives for a very specific reason.  This week I lost a wonderful friend who came into my life to teach me how to transcend, how to rise above the circumstance and find a way to be grateful for what I was given.  She came into my life over 22 years ago as a supervisor at my first office job and over the course of the past 22 years she became one of my best friends, teaching me some of the greatest lessons I've ever learned on my path.

She married late in life and had a beautiful son; one of those children that you know are magical from the first moment you are able to have a conversation with them, he had an incredible love of nature and animals.  Sadly he wasn't meant to be here on our path with us for a long time and passed away when he was only 5 years old.  In life there are moments that penetrate your mind so clearly that they always feel like they just happened, like a sore that never heals.  One of those moments is the evening that I got the phone call that her son had died  I will never forget getting off the phone and going into my sons room and seeing his father lying there while Daniel slept, crying over what an unimaginable thing had just happened.  Our son slept in our bed that night, neither of us slept though, unable to imagine how my friend would get through the magnitude of her grief.

Over the course of grieving for her son, many of us gathered strength from her.  She was wounded, but she rallied to move her life forward and to celebrate the gift that her son had been in her life.  She set up a memorial fund in his name, raising funds for kids who are wards of the Children’s Aid Society to get a post secondary education, and eventually went on to adopt a daughter from abroad.

She is my hero!  Over the course of the last two years, through the ups and downs of my own life, she has been there.  Battling cancer the entire time, but always one of my loudest cheerleaders.  When I felt that things looked bleakest, I always thought of what she had been through in her own life; how much she had had to overcome and the grace and grattitude that she always exhibited in her own life.  On our girls nights out, her laughter was always the loudest, her joy in being surrounded by people who loved her always so clear.

Last year she posted on Facebook that she was thinking of her son and her daughter, and that she was so tired.  After everyone rallied her with messages of strength and love she replied “I would live it all again in a heartbeat because to change any of it might change all of it and there are too many beautiful moments in the midst of all this". But that is how she lived her life, full of gratitude for what the world had given her.  She is my eternal guide to gratitude, to finding beauty in a world that isn’t always beautiful, to being a mother and a friend.  I am grateful today that the universe brought this beautiful soul into my life and I am grateful that today heaven holds an extra angel that is watching over me and my boys. 

Love you F, may you rest in peace.
 

Saturday 13 October 2012

Rough Mommy Days - Or Are they???

I would like the email address of whoever it was who created Halloween!  What kind of a crazy person designs a holiday where kids get to get all spooked (read hyper) and dressed up and they get to inhale bags of candy (read hyper again)?  I'll tell you for sure that this holiday was created by a man who did not have children!  With absolute certainty, it wasn't created by the single mother of three boys!

Today started out as most Saturdays do for me when I have the boys.  We have a quiet breakfast, we go grocery shopping and we run errands.  However, today the minute those boys stepped into the Superstore and saw all the Halloween costumes, candies and decorations - that was it.  That was around 9am, it's currently 6pm and they are still hyper.

I love Halloween, I actually decorate the whole house; inside and out.  But the boys and I have a huge challenge that we face every year.  You see, I like Halloween, I appreciate the whole witches and ghost thing.  But I don't subscribe to the whole "blood and gore" aspect of Halloween.  I never let my eldest wear costumes that I thought were outside the realm of what I thought was appropriate (he keeps talking about a friends mom who is a Halloween control freak, but I think that really he's talking about me).  It has already started with Lucas, he wants to be something "scary" and I just don't like the idea...so what we have here is a Halloween standoff.  He refuses to want the costumes that I like and I refuse to buy the costumes that he likes.  I'm going to win this one...that little boy has no money and assuming that he would like to partake in the holiday then I'm going to have the last word. 

I'm trying to be patient, but I just looked up from writing my blog to see that the three year old has stripped down naked and drawn "tattoo's" all over his body.  God grant me the strength to get through Halloween, because when this holiday of candy infused craziness finally ends that other holiday is at our door; and I can't even begin to explain to you the craziness that ensues at my house during that particular holiday. 

The next three months will fly by, and there will be a lot of craziness but there will be many more beautiful memories made.  Time, as always, continues to bring my life more into focus.  The crazy comes with the great and this time of year for every moment of complete insanity there is a moment of perfect beauty and awe.  I'm looking forward to taking them all in stride; afterall I am a very proud tired mom.



Monday 1 October 2012

And Suddenly it Settles

A funny thing has been happening lately, the journey has gotten exponentially easier.  From day to day, week to week it all appears to be getting easier; and as it becomes easier it has become more enjoyable. 

About a week ago a feeling of peace settled in my life, a feeling like it's all finally okay.  The boys are all in school full days now and its amazing how it feels to know that they are having full days involved in school work and that I'm not so reliant on help from others to manage the boys throughout the day.  And when I get home at the end of the day, it's a pleasure to see them and to spend time with them.  All three boys are getting older, and as they grow they bring me more joy.  Just as I wrote months ago, the journey of raising my boys gets better with each passing week; time continues to make the experience that much more wonderful.

And then there's the process of getting divorced, we are still absolutely nowhere near being finalized with that.  But it no longer concerns me the way that it once did.  I have a full, wonderful life and he has his.  We are both travelling in opposite directions, further and further apart with only the boys to keep us connected in any way.  I have made peace with the fact that he is no longer the man that I married and that I loved;  that man no longer exists, but I'm okay with that.  His role in my life was to give me my beautiful sons, once they were all in my world there was no longer a role for him in my journey.  There isn't a gift more significant in this world than what he gave to me.  The boys are my joy, my pride and the most magical thing that I have ever, or will ever, be a part of.

And lastly there is my little secret of the past year, a wonderful new man in my life.  Someone who makes me laugh, and makes me feel beautiful and who is the first person in my life who has ever been able to make me slow down.  I'm grateful that we found our way into each others lives, and while the relationship is still relatively new, I am open to whatever the experience of having him in my world will bring, and am exponentially grateful for the quiet that he instills in me.  He is the first person in my life who isn't always in a hurry to be somewhere, or to do something, and I'm grateful that this is a skill that, believe it or not, I am learning from him. 

So, today I am filled once again with gratitude; my cup runneth over.  There is so much in my world for which I am grateful, many of those things I overlooked for years.  But now it appears that a part of learning to slow down is allowing me to finally see the things in my world that are nothing short of gracious blessings and I am filled with the desire to keep learning and growing while I find my path.  The path will continue to have its twists and turns, and no two routes are ever going to be the same.  The important thing will never be the final destination, it will always be the journey.  I am happy to report that my journey is quite remarkable and I am enjoying every moment along the way.