Anniversary Memories

    Today marks the one year anniversary of when we said our final good-byes to Mahlon. I won't remember every little detail of his day, but some moments were so vivid that I'll carry them with me for always.
     It was a dreary day. The weather seemed to match our emotions. I asked God for a rainbow, but the sky remained gray.
     I'll always remember the shoes. Hundreds and hundreds of shoes. I couldn't make myself look up to see who the people were who were walking by to say their final farewell. The shoes kept marching by. Big shoes, little shoes, shiny new shoes, old cracked shoes, wide shoes, narrow shoes, dusty shoes, plain shoes, Sunday shoes with their embossed designs on their toes, ugly shoes, pretty shoes. Shoes, shoes, shoes marching by in a solemn line.
     I'll never forget the sight of my four remaining brothers taking a turn together to gently fill the grave. It was the final activity the five brothers would ever get to do together
     I'll cherish the memory of how David and I remained behind when the crowd left to go back to eat lunch. The Amish part of the funeral was now over. We played some music for him, and finally we too had to leave. It still doesn't feel right or real that the three of us ex-Amish are now only two.
     Everyone was almost done eating by the time we got back to Dad's house. The afternoon passed in a blur of people wanting to talk.
     We left early that evening for our long drive home. In the middle of the night we stopped at a rest area. I broke down crying again, asking God why this all had to happen, and why He didn't give me the rainbow I had so wanted. It wouldn't have had to be spectacular, any little rainbow would have been fine. I tried to pull myself together and went out to where the rest of the family was waiting for me. On our way out of the building Kenneth stopped by a vending machine. I didn't pay any attention to that until he turned and gave me a pack of Skittles. I looked at it and had to pause for a moment. There was my rainbow.
     These past few days over this four day anniversary I've had little rainbows pop up in unexpected places. On my lap as LV and I were driving down the road, on the floor in our laundry room, as well as other spots where I have never seen rainbows before. I'm finding them to be so comforting.
     Though I miss Mahlon so much, I can still say, "God is good all the time!"

F ~Flashbacks

   The word "triggered" is used a lot in todays world. It's not on my list of favorite words, but it's alive and well in my life. I searched for a synonym for it, and came up with flashback, which is what I'll go with today.

   I don't talk about this often, but most of my regular readers are aware that my brother Mahlon died of what initially looked like an apparent heroin overdose a little over six months ago.

    It has been hard, but I'm doing okay for the most part. That is … until someone starts talking about addicts and their opinions of the epidemic or in some instances, making jokes about the use of illegal substances. When ever that happens I am all kinds of not okay.

   It happened again yesterday. I was sitting there at homeschool group having a pleasant conversation with one of the other Moms while our children were in one of their classes. Someone else stopped by the church where our group meets and walked over to join us and turned the conversation to completely different topics that included how a young woman who is struggling with addiction has been written off by her family, which is as it should be, the person talking said in an assured manner.

   Every fiber of my being wanted to get up, and run away. It was hard to breathe, my hands became cold and clammy,  and a knot formed in my stomach. It was a physical struggle to remain sitting and try to tune out the conversation. A silent prayer whispered under my breath for strength, and then in my mind I was a young girl in my bare feet running through the flower filled meadow of my childhood with Mahlon, far away from this awful conversation.

   I'm hoping I won't always have these reactions, but for now "flashbacks" are something I deal with.

The Little Things

When I went to the website that shared Mahlon's obituary I noticed they had the option to sign up for a daily grief support email. I went ahead and signed up. 

The first few emails that came, if they had been on paper I would have crumpled them up and thrown them in the trash. I seriously considered unsubscribing, but decided to give it a few more days.

I'm glad I did. While some days I like what they send a lot more than other days, none of them make me feel like throwing them away.

Today the email included this paragraph:

We spend a lot of our lives looking forward...forward to a vacation, a milestone, or even just the weekend. It is from loss that we realize that looking beside us is where we find the real joy. Our friends and loved ones are the people with whom we share our daily lives and with whom we build the most lasting memories. It is our shared morning coffee, a quick phone call or email, or watching a favorite tv show together that really defines the simple, yet most impactful joys of life. While the sadness of loss is startling, take it as an opportunity to look and see what is beside you now. Treasure those people and those mundane moments, for they are what really matter most. 

I have to agree. I want to continue treasuring the ordinary little things in life that have always meant so much to me already. And I'm so very glad for all those little ordinary things I used to do with my brother. Those are memories I'll treasure always. 

I had kept all our text messages and chats on Facebook. Last night I was reading through them, so thankful I never deleted them. They made me laugh, others made me cry, but all of them are treasured. 

Memories

Memory after memory has been flooding my mind this past week of one of the kindest, most tender hearted young boys I have ever known. My brother Mahlon.

I don't have many pictures, but I treasure the ones I do have. In this picture Mahlon is nine years old. We were on a family vacation and he was waiting on the rest of the family as we were getting ready to walk through the Watkins Glen Gorge. Our driver took the picture and gave us a copy later.

At nine, Mahlon loved the outdoors and animals. Animals seemed to have a special connection with him. He could talk to them, and they'd listen, doing what he asked. Not only our farm animals, but wild animals as well.

One of our favorite Mahlon/animal memories are when we went out to the barn one day and a cat came in carrying a terrified chipmunk. Mahlon was horrified and told her to drop it right away, which she did. "Run, run," Mahlon yelled at the chipmunk, and run it did, straight toward him, up his pant legs, up over his coat, and with a final leap it perched on top of his hat where Mahlon guarded it safely before taking it outside and letting it go.

I can't help but think of the similarities between that happening and his life later on where he battled with some serious things, and how he is safe in the arms of Jesus now, and free from all that.