Rise and Shine Girl Blog

Warning: I have finished this blog and realized I spent too much time doing so…I have not editied this or spell checked…I need to run…

I sit here and think back to what I was doing 6 years ago…

I was sitting in a skimpy hospital gown waiting for my epidural while my husband talked medical lingo with nurses.  No, not my nurses, his patients’ nurses.  Yes, Charles worked throughout Mia’s birth, no hurt feelings here.  Yes, in a perfect world it would have been great to have him completely by my side, massaging my shoulders, saying words of encouragement as the doctors prepared my belly to take on scar number 3.  Who am I kidding?  I’m the type of person when faced with potential pain I go within and don’t want to be bothered.  Like when you have been worshipping the porcelain god and finally find a comfortable spot where you feel okay, the world isn’t spinning, your stomach is at ease and you can finally feel a normal body temperature.  At these moments, thank goodness they don’t happen often, those close to me know to let me be.

I realize I went off on a tangent. Today I celebrate Mia turning 6, in a few days I celebrate Amanda turning 18, then a few days later Cole turns 11 and then a few days from there Charles turns…older.  This is a busy time of year for our family, well really for me seeing as I’m the family party planner, and I must admit there are several times I think, “I can’t wait until June 11th”.  June 11th is the day after all of the birthday madness.

Amongst this week of madness, I kicked off June by attending an all day seminar on a therapy modality I have used, but wanted to get better at.  I left the seminar yesterday with more tools in my box, but also left with a life lesson in my heart.

First I must say, you know you are getting older when you question if the instructor found the best plastic surgeon in the world seeing as she has no wrinkles on her face and has that perky look to her.  At the end of the day, I soon learned there is no plastic surgeon involved.  I have been sitting in front of a 25 year old all day, not a 25 year old wannabee.

Robin was the instructor for the day and was wise beyond her years.  I always love running into these types of people because I know that somewhere in their life there is a story there.  At the end of the day I learned what Robin story is.

Towards the end of the seminar Robin touched upon loss/grief involving the therapy modality we were all there for.  As usual I looked ahead in the handouts to see where we were going and saw the name Kyle Ritcheske along with a saying “Good People Change the Way You Live”.  My first thoughts were, should I know this name, should I know this quote, did I know this at one point and that information was part of the brain cells that have left my brain?  I soon found out that this name is new to me, but I know it will not be a name I forget.

I’m going to write the following in the voice of Robin:

It was about 4 years ago and I was with a group of friends sitting in tubes in a lake at a friend’s weekend house.  We were all having a good time and suddenly someone said where did Kyle go.  He was just gone, not in his tube, he disappeared.  We knew we didn’t see him get out of the lake.  We all went into a panic and started diving into the water, yelling his name.  Kyle was gone.  Fast forward…Kyle died.  He had a silent seizure while sitting in his tube and drowned.

We had to call his family who lived in Michigan to share the news.  Days later there were the usual ceremonial events that take place following a person’s death.

Back to my voice:

Oftentimes people look at the wake/funeral/etc. as the closing piece.  These rituals honor the person who has passed, but they also gives those left behind some closure.  My mind goes back to January 15th of this year.  The day my mom, Marsha, passed away.  I was sitting in The Mirage hotel in Las Vegas talking to my dad in Pennsylvania.  There is nothing more surreal than dealing with life/death in the town where everything is fake.  My dad stated he has chosen to postpone a service for Marsha until May.  For selfish reasons I was disappointed.  I needed for this chapter to wrap up.  It had been consuming so much of my mind, time and energy…I needed closure or so I thought.

On May 5th we held a celebration honoring Marsha.  It was held in the beautiful rolling hills of Eastern Pennsylvania.  We were in nature, the birds were in flight and chirping, and the sun was warming our skin.  There were about a 100 of us who set aside this day to celebrate Marsha.

After the beautiful day, my dad’s house was filled with family, friends, laughter, tears, and good food.  My dad knows how to feed us and well!  Later that day my dad told my sister and me to look around the house and let him know what we wanted.  That was somewhat awkward, but eventually I felt more comfortable as memories came back while looking at various remnants of life .  In the end I took: the Scrabble Board we played growing up, a few sentimental jewelry items, a sweatshirt, a scarf, some of my dad’s paintings (he is an awesome artist) and a stretchy beaded bracelet with some little buddhas on it.

Back to Robin and her words:

Kyle died in a tragic manner and none of us were able to tell him goodbye like you would with someone dying from a terminal illness.  We didn’t want to close the book on Kyle, we didn’t want to say goodbye, we chose to say “Hello”.  We keep Kyle alive by telling stories about him. We created a FB page to honor and remember him.  The FB page has grown from a group of people who knew him when he was physically here with us to a group of people who know Kyle through stories and pictures.  I was just in Hong Kong a couple of weeks ago with friends and we brought Kyle with us.  We have a flag that travels with us representing Kyle.  We talked about how Kyle would enjoy this trip.  We keep Kyle alive in our thoughts.  We say hello to him everyday.  We haven’t said goodbye to him forever.

Back to me:

I had a 45 minute drive home in Dallas traffic after the seminar.  It was a beautiful day, hot, but not uncomfortably hot.  There was a slight cool breeze in the air, well for Texas standards.  I had the car top down enjoying the moment.  I looked over at my rearview mirror and saw the stretchy beaded bracelet with the buddhas. I now realize I have been taking Marsha with me on my daily car adventures.  She’s been part of some interesting conversations, sibling fights, and some good Sonic limeades.  Oh, not to mention some great music.

Today I celebrate Mia turning 6 and giving us joy!  I also celebrate and live with all of the people who are no longer visibly present in my life, but are present in my memories and the footprints they have left.

RISE AND SHINE!