Mourning the loss

This Sunday morning Jared and I lay in bed reading our books while Luke played with his choo choo trains in the next room, running back and forth crawling on the bed to get our attention.

My thoughts wandered from my book as I thought about what Ruby would be doing in this situation.

She would probably be sitting on our bed with a handful of toys in front of her trying to fit just one in her mouth.

There isn’t a situation that goes by that I don’t think about what Ruby would be doing if she were here with us.

There isn’t a situation that goes by that I am not reminded that we are missing a piece of our family.

Last night I heard about a dear friend that had passed away.

We were high school friends and cheerleaders together. I have a lot of fond memories of those times.

 
{Brittany is front row, brown curly hair}

We reconnected years later on facebook.

She was married with one child.

Her son was a special needs child and she was always posting about his progress and updating her page with pictures of him.

While going through the loss of Ruby she would send little facebook messages letting me know she was thinking of me.

As I frantically scanned over her facebook page and blog to get some answers as to her passing I came across a note she posted about raising a special needs child. It was written by an anonymous person.

"I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability... to imagine how it would feel. It’s like this...

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip to Italy...

After months of anticipation, the day finally arrives. The plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland".

Holland? you say. What do you mean  Holland? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy.

But there's been change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.

So now you must go out and buy new guidebooks. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It's just a different place. It's slower paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you look around you begin to notice that Holland has windmills, Holland has tulips, and Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy, and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there and for the rest of your life you will say, "Yes, that’s where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."

And that pain of that will never, never, ever go away because the loss of that dream is a very significant loss.

But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things about Holland.”

Even though I am not raising a special needs child at this moment, this post hit home to me. My flight plan changed as well and I did not land in Italy where I wanted to be.

Maybe I didn’t land in Holland, but I definitely didn’t land in Italy.

This post taught me that if I spend my life mourning the life that I didn’t get I will miss out on all that I still have. I will forget the blessings I received having spent just 15 short days with Ruby.

Thank you Brittany for sharing this and teaching me from beyond the grave.

Hope you are having a happy birthday today.

Give Ruby a squeeze for me.