Tonight's picture was taken in December of 2007. That day we took Mattie to the US Botanical Gardens in Washington, DC. That was always a wonderful holiday tradition because the Gardens gets all decorated for Christmas! It almost seems magical. Miniature versions of the monuments come out on display but the clever part about this is the structures are made out of plant materials. Mattie was posed in front of a model of the US Capitol. In addition to these wonderful plant models, the Gardens always had toy trains running as well! December in DC is cold, yet the interior of the Gardens is like a tropical rain forest! Which was a glorious and memorable feeling. Something we all enjoyed.
Quote of the day: When we treat people merely as they are, they will remain as they are. When we treat them as if they were what they should be, they will become what they should be. ~ Thomas S. Monson
As I look at the date on the calendar, I can literally see it is December 17th, yet a part of me really doesn't understand what that means. Well I got a real rude awakening for what the actual date was yesterday when I went shopping. Behind one of the sale's clerks it said..... 9 days until Christmas! When I saw that, my immediate reaction was............ are you kidding???? This can't be! In my mind, Christmas is a long time away! I have no idea why I thought that. People may be decorating, there maybe lights all around me, but the irony is, I DON'T see them!!! Either I have tuned them out or they make no impact on me anymore. I am not sure which! I can hear the Christmas music playing around me, I can see the decorations in shopping malls and so forth, but to some extent it is the product of living in two universes. That is all I can say.
When I ran into my friend Debbie in Hallmark the other day and we were talking about a host of issues, I was trying to describe to her what can happen to parents who lose a child to cancer. It is very easy to want to shut out the world, to shut down as a person, and to close your heart off to just about everyone and every thing. In a way it is safer that way. After all, for us we received one of life's greatest emotional blows, and the verdict is still out how we will recover from that. As a result, though we physically look intact, that is misleading. It is misleading because you have no idea the chaos that remains internally.
It is hard to know what we fit into! Going to parties inevitably means seeing and hearing about family plans and as a grieving mom I know I have gone through various stages if you will. I can feel very angry and bitter at times in which I can't take that my friends have healthy and alive children and I don't. Of course, I don't wish harm or ill will to their children. It is simply a feeling and one that seems natural to being human. Yet these intense feelings can sometimes impact friendships. As more time has lapsed since Mattie's death, I have had a great deal to work on emotionally. This being one of the issues. I can rationalize that my friends need to be able to live their lives with their children and yet at the same time, it is okay to acknowledge that I have my own feelings of grief. At times it works and I can engage with others and at other times I know when I have to retreat, but that is the key..... with time, I have learned to identify my own feelings and needs more acutely and to me this is the key to survival.
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