The Angel in my Garden

Brrrr!!  Old man Winter is outside the door knocking like crazy trying to get in!  I sit here, smiling and warm as toast.  I have said that if it takes every dime I have I will stay warm in the winter and cool in the summer.  I can remember, as a child, having to break ice in a washpan to get ready for school and running fast as I could to the wood stove in our living room and standing as close as I possibly could.  Didn't think a thing of it and nobody else did either.  That's how it was then.  It was the accepted way of life, the only way of life.

  

How everything changes with time!  The old cliche', "time heals all" is almost true.  Time doesn't actually "heal",  but it changes everything, including us, how we think, how we feel.  We become accustomed to how things are, it begins to happen so slowly we don't even realize it's happening.  It just does.  One day we wake up with a start and maybe it has been days since we have thought of a pain so great that at the time it happened, we thought we would never smile again and surely we would die for it hurt too much to stay alive.  This is what happens to most of us who have lost a child.  The pain never leaves, you are never the same, a part of us is missing.   You can't ask questions because you get in real emotional trouble when you begin to ask questions that have no answer.  After a few years, you know you must have been in shock to have survived, but you made it.  God sees us through.  We can't know it then, but a great strength is gained.  If  one can go through this, there will be nothing we can't do, because nothing can compare.  Everything else pales.  No pain could be this great.  We survived and we are smiling and breathing and doing all the normal things.  We look forward to Christmas again and springtime.  We are not "healed",  for I don't believe we can ever cope, but we manage so well that most people would never even know. 

Be sweet and be good!!  Till tomorrow, on a brighter note---Polly   (Smile)