Things don’t always go as planned…I ought to know this by now. Anticipate the unexpected, don’t get rattled when it actually happens and try to roll with it. How much easier it is said than done…
I’m not sure if I have really bad luck or just an incredibly sensitive digestive system; whatever the cause, as of Friday evening I wasn’t entirely sure how I would manage to pull off my part in the ‘Celebrate My Drive’ event Saturday. Two solid days of severe stomach issues left me as weak as pond water. I thought, “Great; this is just perfect. It had to happen now, when I’ve had this on the calendar for five months!”
Thanks to Grace’s help, I was able to attend and participate despite having been ill; she acted as my chauffeur and chaperone… It’s been a good while since she joined me for a bracelet related activity; like the rest of our family, she is content for me to be the spokesperson. Grace has often said she shared enough about her brother when she completed her senior exit-community service project…
Throughout the day, she remained fairly quiet and reserved, in line with her ‘closed and off-limits’ position on this subject. Grace was perfectly content to remain in the background and monitor my stamina; she stepped in only when I needed a break and spoke up only if I referred to her specifically…
It was during one of those ‘referral’ moments when I believe she said more than she intended, at least in front of me… A parent stopped at our table and began flipping through the photo album of B’s car, pausing at the aerial view; at long last, I finally heard Grace speak about getting ‘The Call’.
“That’s the picture I saw on the news. After Mom called and woke me up, I got my friend on the phone… I watched one channel, she turned on another; suddenly it was right there… They (the reporters in the news helicopter) were flying, kind of hovering over his car…it was horrible… I couldn’t believe it…. I was home alone when it came on... I just sat in the floor crying, rocking back and forth, trying to make sense of what I’d seen. I was only 15 years old at the time-can you imagine? How do you keep it together after seeing that? I hated them for showing it…”
Wow. Spontaneous…gut-wrenching…sixty seconds and another little piece of my heart is gone…
I have to say, I wasn’t expecting that either…
Wishing you many blessings, sunshine and hope…tg
Tammy will update her blog on Mondays and Thursdays
