Farewell Yellow Ribbon

In 2007 our Memorial Day celebration changes though we celebrate just the same as we always do: two parades and a visit to the memory stone up on the hill.  It changes everything when you know your two middle children plan to go the next morning to sign on the dotted line to join the United States military. And sign they do. She leaves in September. Mama grieves. Daddy cannot understand because he is so proud he is busting his buttons until the day it dawns on him that she is actually leaving.  Christmas that year changes too. We have our traditional Christmas Brunch twice. He leaves for boot camp five days before she comes home for Christmas. Mama grieves. The first the yellow ribbon is on the mail box and more on the Christmas tree.

Oh, the places we go...
Road tripping to boot camp. Parade in Review. Mama's heart beats a proud cadence: "We are the Navy, the mighty, mighty Navy...". The next time we fly. Great Lakes in February is mighty, mighty cold.

A year in Monterey at the Presidio. Mama misses out but a special someone makes it there. A Sweet Sailor comes home to get married. Foregoing yellow we beribbon the church in blue and brown.  The Biker extends his annual bike ride south all the way to Pensacola to take a sailor to dinner. We celebrate a Hawaiian Christmas, a gift from sailor. Pearl Harbor. Hickam Field. Waikiki. Hanauma Bay.  All the family gathers in his unfurnished apartment at Mililani Manor. We decorate a pineapple with purple ribbon and watch ribbons of oil rise from the USS Arizona.

Hawaii again. This time Mama keeps the watch in a square chair at Tripler. Jaw surgery is brutal and it is successful.  The National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Punchbowl Crater and the Foster Botanical Gardens, both in Honolulu. And the ribbons of light coming into Phoenix.

We have Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant in Virginia Beach and we visit a little house in Augusta, Georgia. There is a blue ribbon on the mailbox to welcome our little Georgia Peach.

There are many comings and goings. Sighs and tears. Surprise visits and anticipated homecomings. At some point a bright yellow bandana becomes the permanent yellow ribbon on the front door. It weathers and fades. Then, after six years, they come home. In August the Sweet Sailor finishes her enlistment. They pack up the little Georgia house, the little Georgia Peach and move home. Three months later the Super Sailor follows suit from Virginia Beach. He is home in time for Christmas. There are job offers coming in from all over. In January his life starts over again, this time in Houston.

There are still comings and goings and Texas is too far away. The yellow ribbon is no longer on the door. Today there is red, white and blue to celebrate our freedom. Freedom that they stood watch for away from home and family. We are proud and we thank you.

Keep a yellow ribbon tied around your heart for those still coming home from far away places and far too many kinds of battles. Wear red shoes for courage.

And I cry.

All through the evening I think of her and I cry. I crawl into my bed and I think someone somewhere is not sleeping and I cry.  I don't really know her but her daddy is my cousin. She is a little mama with three white haired babies and one soon to be born and now she has to have an empty place and a grave and her mama lives far away. And I cry. I think about that far away grandma and I cry. I don't know him either but he is my sister's nephew and I cry. I think of another white haired boy and a brown eyed boy and other brown eyed boys and all the other little boys and I cry. I think of all the little mamas and all the pain and I can't curl up in a tight enough ball to make the pain go away. I couldn't curl up tight enough then and I can't curl up tight enough now and I cry. Today a little boy winged his way to heaven and tonight I just don't know if there are enough red shoes...        

Link: I've learned to listen differently

Once again sharing a link to another blog because it is so wise.
Never Forget Andrew

Choose Healing

I posted this today on a grief page where I am a member.  May it be a light on your healing journey.

In the past week or so I have read many posts here by bereaved parents who are 8, 12, 15 even 20+ years into their grief journey.
These quotes catch their general feelings:
 "They said it will get better but it gets worse every year."
"I have nothing to "go on" for in my life."
"I still have a boulder on top of my heart and feel kind of numb or frozen."
"I can barely find a reason to still hang on."
This just squeezes my heart and makes me so sad. Our son died 23 years ago as a 8 year old.  Leroy would now be 31.

The first years of my grief were a deep, painful journey, dark and lonely.  It was a terrifying place of sheer survival. As the years have passed I have found deep, deep healing. I no longer walk in the dark. I am not afraid. I have joy and laughter.  Yes, I miss him and yes I cry.

I faced the death of my son the same way I do any new experience: I read every book I can find on the topic.  I found a couple a rummage sale in my home town.  One of them, Don't Take My Grief Away by Doug Manning, became my grief manual.

This book is divided into 3 parts.  Part one is funeral planning which we had long passed when I got  the book but I was gratified to learn that some of the decisions we made instinctively were very healthy.

The second part encourages one to grieve as needed, in their own way and at their own pace, hence the title. Don't let anyone take your grief away. He says you need to give your self permission to grieve and not let anyone else dictate what that should look like.

The third part emphasizes giving yourself permission to heal. Just as we need to give ourselves permission to grieve, we need to give ourselves permission to heal.  Unspoken and deep within us we have the belief that if we stop grieving we stop loving and we have forgotten. We consider it a betrayal of our child. That is so far from the truth. If we do not choose to live and choose to heal we are in essence saying that the death of our child is more important than our child's life.  When we allow ourselves to heal there is nothing holding us back from treasuring every photograph and  reliving every memory with joy. There is nothing that stops us from enjoying every place we ever went with our son. We celebrate a little brown eyed boy by eating his favorite foods with pleasure. We celebrate his birthday every year with cupcakes frosted blue and decorated with sprinkles and gummy fish. Some years family members have made them in four different states.  We are sharing his life with the next generation who will grow up knowing Uncle Leroy from the stories we tell, his trunk full of belongings and pictures of him everywhere.

I want to leave you with two quotes I collected today:

"The last 20 years have been what "I" have called not kind. I have learned to go into my trials and pull out my joys and blessings."
Sandy Holombo-Olson 2014

"We can still choose to either die alongside them,
spiritually and emotionally, or to take this day and
soak up as many good things from it as we can muster."
Erica Farrimond 2014 TCF

Choose healing and wear red shoes for courage - Pat

A link: 15 Things I Wish I'd Known About Grief

First time for everything.  I am posting a link to another blog for the first time on and red shoes... because it is good.  I have read it all and even written some when it comes to grief and bereavement; this is among the best I have ever found.  May it be good for you also.  
 15 Things I Wish...Identity Renewed

Don't grieve for me...

Line from a poem  called Letter from Heaven:
"Grieve for me, but for a short time please
I am here beside you on my knees
You must remember when you feel sad I do too..."

My response:
I do not grieve for my son. I grieve for me.  No one alive or dead including the one I am grieving can dictate or limit or command my grief.  It is mine to do with it as I need and as I will.  I sorrow because I love.  My grief is an expansion of the relationship and love we had here into the relationship and love we continue to have.  I do not believe my grief for my son withholds peace from him.  What I see from my side is so finite. He has gone to infinity with God beyond space and time, his understanding now includes eternity, no beginning and no end. My understanding is locked in time, in space, in the beginning and the end.

Walking Shoes

I found this on the Compassionate Friends Facebook page. After 22 years my shoes fit pretty well. Some days they still hurt and some days I hate them but mostly now they walk in sweet memory of my little brown-eyed boy.  We will celebrate the Runner's birthday next week on Family Night eating Rice-A-Roni with hamburg, bean beans and Fish Cupcakes. It will be good. I will miss mine who are away more than the one who is gone away.

I hate my shoes. 
Each day I wear them, and each day I wish I had another pair. 
Some days my shoes hurt so bad that I do not think I can take another step. 
Yet, I continue to wear them. 
I get funny looks wearing these shoes. 
They are looks of sympathy. 
I can tell in others eyes that they are glad they are my shoes and not theirs. 
They never talk about my shoes. 
To learn how awful my shoes are might make them uncomfortable. 
To truly understand these shoes you must walk in them. 
But, once you put them on, you can never take them off. 
I now realize that I am not the only one who wears these shoes. 
There are many pairs in this world. 
Some woman are like me and ache daily as they try and walk in them. 
Some have learned how to walk in them so they don't hurt quite as much.
Some have worn the shoes so long that days will go by before they think about how much they hurt. 
No woman deserves to wear these shoes. 
Yet, because of these shoes I am a stronger woman. 
These shoes have given me the strength to face anything. 
They have made me who I am. 
I will forever walk in the shoes of a woman who has lost a child...
Author Unknown   

Following the Shepherd - Pat