Abundance of Love

It is the Sunday before Christmas and John is gone to Boston and Doug is at a friend's house. I sit here, with Cos by my side.

We held the Third Annual Ceremony of Remembrance one week ago today. I worked on the event with Linda from The Compassionate Friends. It was held for Parents, Family, Siblings and Friends of Children who have Died. I did a lot more advertising about this year's ceremony. Although it went well in that I think that the people who attended found it to be of comfort, I was somewhat disappointed in that it didn't attract more families. In particular, I was hoping that in some small way this event might be of help to families in the city who like Shamar's family have experienced the death of a child through violence. But then I think about the difference between life in Pittsford and life in the inner city. I guess it is not surprising that more city families did not attend the ceremony. I hope to continue to more actively work on closing this city/suburb gap in Jeff's memory in the years to come.

I woke up this morning realizing again how fortunate I am. Jeff's death has created a hole in my heart ... but the love of family locally and at a distance is now so much more evident than ever before. This love is indeed essential to my ability to go on.

The list is endless...Jeff's death has brought people -- my local family -- out of the wood work -- people whose love and lives continue to touch me in ways they can never imagine. I simply would not be here today without them.

People in Compassionate Friends talk about how important it is to be able to connect with other people who completely understand us having experienced the death of their own child. They are right in that there is something to be said for being able to talk to people who know exactly what you are saying and need no other explanation. But the notion of only people who have been in this situation truly understanding us, bereaved parents, is flawed. Or at least I have found it to be. It negates the fact that there are people who are able to walk beside you and still accompany you on this horrific-at-times journey without having every experienced the death of their own child.

These are the people who go to the Ceremony of Remembrance even if they would rather not. They are the people who are there to listen or to let you cry or to hug when you need it and help you when you are frenetically working on an event in Jeff's memory --even as the intensity of your working masks the doubling over of pain you are feeling at the same time.

Jeff, to me, continues to represent unadulterated love. His passion, his hope, his infectious smile, his love of life, his zaniness, his huge heart... to me continue to exemplify a pure love not yet affected by the challenges and hardships of life which weigh all of us down.

I believe that it is because of Jeff's life that I continue to be surrounded by an abundance of love. Now he has an endless supply of that love -- and it is because of this that I am able to find the courage to try to make life better in whatever way I can...

So I will thank Jeff ...and Doug... and John ...and my local family and my family afar as well as my colleagues at both jobs ...and the strangers whose paths mine have crossed who continue to help alone the way.

THANK YOU ALL.

I remain blessed this Christmas week.