I count my blessings every day and thank God for all the good (and bad) in my life. Life has so many peaks and valleys and I'm a strong believer that the bad times everyone must go through are what make the good ones so great...right!?
I follow a few blogs - most are friends of mine that are in pretty much the same stage of life. There's one I read from time to time by a guy named Matt who has a daughter named Madeline. He lost his wife shortly after she gave birth to their only daughter. He blogs about his day-to-day adventures of raising his little Madeline while working and struggling with the loss of his wife. His blog can be poignant, crass at times, tender and downright hilarious when he describes the joys and craziness of raising a 1 year old.
In one of his recent posts he links to a song and a blog he read that really touched him. It happened to be about another couple that went through a loss, not of a spouse, but of their child. I found myself listening to the song while reading the post and crying my eyes out. Raising a child can be the most
exhilarating, hair pulling out, crazy amazing, most wonderful thing in the world - but I can't imagine doing it without Greg. And now that she's here, I can't imagine life without Lily. I know bad things happen to good people and you figure out a way to get through it, but some things just don't seem fair. God has a plan, but it doesn't always make sense to us. One thing I know for sure is that life is fleeting and you've got to savor the moments you have with your family and friends. Our life is so good and we are truly blessed - and I realize that this post may seem a bit sad, but I just don't think there can ever be too many reminders to tell the ones you love just how much they mean to you.
Here's the link to Matt's post and the song:
http://www.mattlogelin.com/archives/2009/07/08/time-and-a-song/
And the blog entry that Matt read that was so touching:
~~
“I would give anything if I could have just one more minute…”The above is something the bereaved often say. Personally, I have always found it to be a silly statement…after all, what good is a minute? Three of them pass in a commercial break, sixty in an hour, nearly fifteen hundred in a day. A minute is so fleeting, in fact, that forty-two million of them expire before a person reaches their eightieth birthday. Clearly, a minute is nothing special.“I would give anything if I could have just one more minute…”
What a silly thing to say.At least that’s what I used to think. Today I realize that, as quickly as a minute may pass, it can be the most valuable thing in the world.Lately I have begun to fantasize about what it would be like to have one more minute with Madeline. In my fantasy I imagine Heather and myself sitting on our couches as we do so much lately, absent-mindedly staring at our computer screens, when all of a sudden a few notes echo from Maddie’s long silent little red piano. I look up and see Maddie pressing the keys as she flashes that brilliant smile of hers at me. Heather and I look at each other in disbelief, then throw our computers aside, leap to our feet, and wrap Maddie up in our arms. As we cover her little face in kisses Maddie giggles and says “Wow” in her sweet little voice. Tears soon stream down our faces as Heather and I kiss our baby all over…on her tiny hands, her cute belly, her pudgy little legs…and run our hands through her curly hair. Finally, as the minute winds down to its final seconds, we tell her that we love her and kiss her one last time before she is gone once again.As silly as it may sound, I would give anything…absolutely anything…to have that minute.~~So on that note - tell your partner, children, parents, friends, heck...tell your neighbor just how much they mean to you.
