One year ago I stood with my boys playing under my feet.
I just ended a call wishing my husband safe travels to Canada for the week.
My boys were picking purple and white crocus enjoying the warmth outside. It was a pleasant spring morning. We were happy. I gazed over to the corner of the yard and noticed the forsythia was beginning to bloom.
Then my father called. His news took the wind from my sails. I was in disbelief, filled with sorrow, loss, love, questions, all in a few moments. I stared at the forsythia while I took it all in...
Just the day before I found myself alone in a craft store. I found the perfect frames to display pressed flowers. Black frames with two pieces of glass inside. I knew they would be perfect to display the wedding flowers I had saved for my childhood friend. The previous June she had a beautiful backyard wedding with many family, friends, and fireworks. I was blessed to create floating mums, hanging mason jar arrangements, and bells of Ireland pomanders. I told her that as a wedding present I would preserve some of her wedding flowers. Bells of Ireland, white peonies, hydrangea, and spider mums do not dry out well in humid Ohio June. I pressed and dried with varying degrees of success. So I kept putting it off. But this Sunday I saw myself finishing the project and delivering it to her at Easter.
It turns out the same day I was thinking of her and her flowers, her body was fighting to survive...
For Monday morning April 15th 2013, as the forsythia began to bloom, she awoke, went back to sleep and didn't awake again.
For a year my heart has grieved for her, her parents, her siblings, and her new husband...
I have tried to reason Why, yet know we will never understand why she had to go so soon.
I continue to send loving thoughts to her family.
And now,
I hold my sisters a little longer when I see them,
I cry when I think of her sisters and family and their loss,
And I think of her often but always when I see the forsythia bloom...
