The important things.....

I have been following Holly Butchers "Note before I die..." blog sporadically since Rye passed on.  I first saw her posting just a few months after my son passed and I bawled my eyes out because every single thing she says is true.  I also wept because my son did not get the opportunity to do most of the things on the list - or at least not enough of them. He also never had to imagine that he would need a list like this.  I weep today because she has passed on - this wise and wonderful young woman whose life touched ours in likeness and who was taken much too soon.  She should not have had to have a list.

This picture was taken in Hawaii - he was travelling.  This is not his dog however, dogs loved him and he loved dogs so if one approached him he would love on it.  No matter what kind.  His dog misses him.

The last post for Holly Butcher has been removed, Im sure so her family can have some peace - or maybe because they can't get things in her inter-world to work the way they need to.  In her post she really allowed me to understand how and why I am changed, yet still chained. I DO still have to live on - here in this place with pain and sorrow - but also filled with joy and awesomeness.

My Mother In Law passed away on December 28, 2017.  Three days after Christmas/Yuletide.  We had a wonderful trip with her to Las Vegas in November where she got to see her grandson play hockey, visit other family members, and see and do new things.  We all did!

I learned how to do modified poses for my morning yoga walk because the sidewalks were so hot.  We saw the Hoover Dam.  The weird water people tried to figure out why the water level in the dam is so low - its a giant drought there - and we took pictures with one foot in Arizona and one foot in Nevada.  Reed was there technically for work with the hockey, but we also had fun and did things.  It is the first trip that I actually remember since Rye passed.  We enjoyed it even through our pain.

This is Reed, Granny and her twin sister Wilda at Hoover Dam.

This is what most of our pictures look like above.

I really thought I would like most of them to look like this one above.

But it doesnt matter - we know who all of those people are - they are OUR people.  They are having fun and learning new things and connecting with each other.  In her post Holly Butcher says " I just want people to stop worrying so much about the small, meaningless stresses in life and try to remember that we all have the same fate after it all so do what you can to make your time feel worthy and great, minus the bullshit."

I try to do that - most of the time I am successful, but sometimes I fall back on the habits of fear and doubt, or of grief and sadness of our losses.  I think it is OK to do that.  It is how I am "feeling" and we have to "feel our feelings" or we never deal with them.  Sometimes we do have to curl up in a ball and shut out the world because our feelings are too hard or we are too tired from being livers of life to deal with them right at the moment.  Doesn't mean we wont be ok.

We are rolling right up on Reeds graduation date - we just had a milestone birthday - his 18th. HE celebrated it by helping Team Alaska win a Bronze Ulu in the Arctic Winter Games in Slave Lake Canada!  Travelling, playing hockey, making friends and living.  

I hear folks all over the place barking, harping, and punishing their kids for bad grades.  I DO work in a school as one of my jobs so I hear it more than most maybe - but I notice it a lot - as if the child's future worth and current value is based on a set of numbers given to him by people who may or may not like him much less LOVE him.  As though his right to actually LIVE might depend on those grades and numbers.

Stop the bus.

Rye had a 3.85 grade point average when he graduated from High School.  How much do you think that matters now?  Not one bit.  People ask when he graduated, when he died, when he worked at such and such.  No one has EVER asked what his grade point average was.

Im not saying that learning isn't important or education - Im just saying that we (as parents) need to be more interested in our child's actual growth in life and skills for life- as a long term liver of life - than in how someone who does not necessarily even really know our child judges them to be growing. Happy and Healthy is the goal for us.

Teach your children to do good deeds, to be kind, to want to make the world better and you have to show them what that looks like. Heck!  Teach them to fish - I thank the men who taught mine to love fishing!  

Help them know how to connect with people and not with a cell phone.  We will have to help with homework sometimes too.  Show them how to do things, volunteer at a shelter for people or animals, help with fundraising for school supplies.  If you haven't been in a school lately you are out of the loop. Our teachers have sometimes 40 kids they are trying to get to the finish line so to speak, and all of them are at various levels of maturity and growth.  They cannot do what needs to be done to make our children well rounded.  They try hard though!  Relax - let that one or two bad grades go - they can start tomorrow to fix that.   They are learning to communicate when they have to talk to that teacher about that grade and to problem solve.  Even if the grade can't be changed.  Life skills.  

I know it is hard - and I am not good at not barking about getting homework done either - I get it!  I know he has to do the homework to graduate, but if something should happen and he doesn't, he will still be here with us - a liver of life, a do-er of good deeds, a man who is good and kind - and can hopefully wash his own socks!  

Be blessed in your journey of life!