Friday, May 25, 2012

Our Video

Curtis' 6th Birthday is approaching.....rapidly. Once again, this month I have struggled with. I swear each year it won't happen and each year it does. While I am looking forward to our little family celebration and trip, I desperately want it to be June. I know it is just a date and dates can't hurt me.... but mentally it is rough.

Last year at this time, Craig and I filmed a home documentary about what it was like to lose a baby. It is Curtis' story. I hope one day to share it with Cole and Claudia so they can truly know what we lost... and how truly wanted they were and our love for them is as deep as it gets.

Last fall I shared these videos with those who donated to the walk, this year, I am opening it up to everyone. It is a little like having your heart ripped open and left out for random people on the internet to stomp on but maybe it could help someone out there.

The bad thing is, we couldn't upload more than 10 minutes at a time, so it is broken down to  six 10 segments.

I hope you will watch.

Links to Curtis video:









Sunday, May 13, 2012

Mother's Day.....

Orginally posted last Mother's Day. I think it needs repeating:

Some Mothers Don’t Get A Perfect Ending By Erma Bombeck
IF you are looking for an answer this Mother's Day on why God reclaimed your child, I don't know.I only know that thousands of mothers out there today desperately need an answer as to why they were permitted
to go through the elation of carrying a child and then to lose it to miscarriage, accident, violence, disease, or drugs.


Motherhood isn't just a series of contractions, it is a state of mind
From the moment we know life is inside us,we feel a responsibility to protect and defend that human bein
It's a promise we can't keep. We beat ourselves to death over that pledge.

"If I hadn't worked through the eighth month"

"If I had just taken him to the doctor when he had a fever"

"If I hadn't let him use the car that night"

"If I hadn't been so naive, I'd noticed he was on drugs".


The longer I live, the more convinced I become that surviving changes us.
After the bitterness, the anger, the guilt and despair are tempered by time, we look at life differently.

When I was writing my book "I Want to Grow Hair,I Want to Grow Up. I Want to Go to Boise," I talked with mothers who has lost lost a child to cancer. every single one of said that death gave their lives new meaning and purpose. And who do you think prepared them for the rough, lonely road they had to travel?

Their dying child.

They pointed their mothers to the future and told them to keep going. The children had already accepted what their mothers were fighting to reject. The children in the bomb out nursery in Oklahoma City have now touched more lives then they will ever know. Workers who had probably given their kids a mechanical pat on the head without thinking that morning were making calls home during the day to their children to say,"I love you."

This may seem like a strange Mothers day column on a day when joy and life abound for millions of mothers through out the country.

But it's also a day of appreciation and respect. I can think of no other mothers who deserve it more then those who had to give a child back.

In the face of adversity we are not permitted to ask "Why me?" You can ask, but you won't get an answer.

Maybe you are the instrument who is left behind to perpetuate the life that was lost and appreciate the time you had with them to do it

The late Gilda Radner summed it up pretty well. "I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned the hard way that some poems don't rhyme and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what is going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity