One Foot In Front of the Other

When I took my dogs, Roger and Violet, out this morning, the birds were singing.  It had stormed during the night and early morning hours, but the rain had passed for the moment.  Listening to the songs floating through the air, I thought How grateful they must be for a new day.   It got me thinking about gratitude and the role it has played in our lives, particularly since the death of our son, Lacy. Years ago, I learned the power of gratitude to uplift and encourage in hard times.  Lacy was in the hospital, on a ventilator, with strep pneumonia.  All together, he would be there for over a month.  The first three weeks were the worst, since he was in ICU and we could only visit three times a day.  I'd go in during the visiting hours and pray for our son, put lotion on his feet and hands, and read a story to him from his picture Bible.  What relieved my anxiety the most, however, was the time I took to express gratitude.  I'd list out loud...

So this hole in our hearts is now permanent, healed but never closed.  Lacy seems far away and so near at the same time. Grief ebbs and flows with the times.  Right now, we are close to the 3rd anniversary of Lacy's death and we are both thinking of him constantly.  Happy times and gut wrenching ones, too. Kenny and I are in the last third of our lives.  We want to finish strong.  As we walk forward, we don't know where our road leads.  Join us on this journey of rediscovery and reinvention. 

This spring I'm determined to get through all the pictures my mom boxed up for storage.  As I've been looking through albums and envelopes of pictures, seeing them through eyes of experience, I understand that these icons of memory don't tell the whole story. Pictures we keep are often staged with everyone smiling at the camera, sometimes wearing their very best clothes, but always in an arranged pose.  It is for us, who lived during that time, to put context to pictures.  Two pictures stand out to me.  One is of my mother and I, smiling into the sun.  Mom is obviously pregnant, wearing a maternity suit that she wore in so many of the black and white photos taken during that time (1957-1958).  It must have been her best, or maybe the only one that she wanted to be photographed wearing.  She was pregnant with my brother, George Edward.  The second picture is of my mother, father, and me,  smiling into the sun.  Mom is wearing the sa...