Please share your journey

I believe as we share our love for our child and tell stories of the good times and the pain of the hard times that we will help others heal as we are healing. Please feel free to share and ask questions as someone may have insight that will help. John's MOM

To know John is to love John

John, my Heartbeat in Heaven. That is the best way I know to describe where my heart is since John's death. When I think of John, which is often, I feel sort of empty or maybe a little lost, and definitely lonely to see him. I'll never forget the words of Lacy, the facilitator, of our grief class, Remembering Our Children. During one of my grief stricken moments that day and not knowing how I was going to survive I left a message on Lacy's voice mail asking how long will this last. That evening at class as we were dismissing Lacy said she needed to make something clear and then she said, "I want to make sure all of you understand that your life has changed and it will never be the same again. Your life will never be the same again!" Was that statement ever point blank and hitting a hurting place inside. John had been gone 6 weeks and I didn't know how I was going to be able to handle this for the rest of my life. During the drive home there was an uncontrollable flood of tears but as I settled in at home and tried to relax by watching TV I realized that the tears brought a release of grief and I was feeling able to cope a little better. During another session of our grief class it was reported by another grieving mother that she had read an article about the tears of grief. The article reported that there are different chemicals in grief tears than in other tears. That helped me to know that my tears were actually therapeutic and were allowing release of chemical built up in my system that were related to grief. I did know that over time the grief would get better. And so it has but my heartbeat is still in heaven after 2 1/2 years. MOM

John's First Day of School

My name is Jackie, and I am John's big sister. I was 22 years old when John was born. When the boys were around 4 and 5 our mom was working nights as a nurse so John and Joshua (our "little" brother) would spend the night at my home. When John was getting ready to start kindergarten my husband and I had three kids. You can imagine how much fun we had with five kids in the house (John, Ben, Joshua, Zack, and Christina.) Mom had to work the night before John's second day of school so he stayed with us. Robert, my husband, went in to wake John up so he could get ready for school. He gently shook him and said, "John, it's time to get ready for school." John rolled over and looked at Robert with a very confused expression on his face. Then he said, "I went to school yesterday, I'm done." He thought going to school was a one day event. He learned a lot that day! - Jackie