Just Imagine If......

Just imagine if you are standing in a Post Office that you have been going to for twenty years to pick up your mail, and all of a sudden your throat is slit by a complete stranger. That happened in Clayton, CA recently. One minute a father, husband and grandfather is going through his mail and the next minute he is dead.
Just imagine if one day, as a little boy or girl, you are riding your bike and your mom comes out and asks to ride your bike for just a minute. It seems she wants to show you something. Then right in front of your eyes your mother is hit and killed by a car. The place is unknown.
Just imagine if you and your six year old daughter go to a friend's farm for a visit. While there your six year old daughter is attacked and killed by the families Rottweiler. That happened in Rochelle, Georgia.
Just imagine if your eleven year old daughter gets sick. She starts to get really sick. Next thing you know she is dead due to a heart attack from a heart valve infection. This happened in Bellevue, Illinois.
Just imagine if your beautiful wife, or mother, or daughter decides to take a ski lesson. She is a beginner skier. She falls on the bunny hill. Not a bad fall, relatively minor, but an hour later she complains of a headache. Then within twenty four hours she is dead. We all know where this happened and to whom.
My heart goes out to these people. Unfortunately , I have three serious "Just imagine if" stories of my own. But for some reason when I read other peoples stories, my heart breaks in two and I can't imagine being them. My mind becomes so jumbled I cannot think straight and I become numb and sad for days. I am sure it is because I know what they are going through. When this happens the shock feels as if you have been dumped into a tub full of ice-cubes. You are paralyzed, you can't think, you couldn't swim to save your life. Where do you go from here? How do you move on? What are you supposed to do next?
Truly, you will never stop feeling the saddness that wraps around you like a newborn swaddled in a blanket. You find a place to deposit your saddness in your body somewhere. Sometimes you take a withdrawal and sit with your saddness for awhile. It feels good to cry and remember the one whom you loved and lost tragically. As the years pass, you deposit the saddness back into your body bank. The withdrawals become farther and fewer inbetween. Eventually, when you sit with your saddness it not all about the tears, it becomes about the joy of life.
You might be wondering how you slowly start to find joy instead of a deep saddness. What happens is you realize what a gift every day truly is. You realize you are not alone. The one that passed is always with you. You learn to love the birds, the sky, the wind, the snow, the mountains, the ocean, the thunder, the lightning, the stars and the moon. For, your loved one is seen in a cloud, on the side of a mountain, in the moon or in the stars. You can hear your loved ones thoughts as the wind blows through your hair, or in the thunderous roar of a storm. You realize the birds are not just singing, they are singing especially to you. You never know where or when you will see, hear or feel the one that was taken so abruptly, without warning and whom you long to see and hear, just one more time. If you pay attention they are there.
As you pay attention, and realize you are not alone you will love your life. You will wake up everyday thanking God for the day ahead of you. You better than anyone will know today is a gift, yesterday created sweet memories and who knows what tomorrow will bring so celebrate today. Smile big, laugh hard, hug like you mean it and look someone in the eye and say, " I love you!"
I pray for Liam Neeson and his sons. I pray they find peace and happiness in their memories. I pray Liam Neeson can be there for those boys who just lost a mother in the most tragic of ways. I leave you this evening with heaviness on my heart knowing what this family is going through. Time to kiss my kids and go to bed!