Our Children

New Normal


It is amazing what can become "normal" to us. ...

Normal for me is trying to decide what to take to the cemetery for Christmas, birthday, Valentine ’s Day, and Easter.


Normal is that extra chocolate Easter bunny sitting on the counter because you always get your children a chocolate bunny, and this year you still bought one for the one who is not here.


Normal is sitting at the computer crying, sharing how you feel with chat buddies who have also lost a child.

Normal is feeling like you know how to act and are more comfortable with a funeral and being at the cemetery. Yet, feeling a stab of pain in your heart when you smell the flowers, see that casket, and all the crying people.

Normal is feeling like you can't sit another minute without getting up and screaming cause you just don't like to sit through church anymore. And yet feeling like you have more faith and belief in God than you ever have had before.

Normal is going to bed feeling like your kids who are alive got cheated out of happy cheerful parents and instead they are stuck with sober, cautious people.

Normal is having tears waiting behind every smile when you realize someone important is missing from all the important events in your families' life.

Normal is not sleeping very well because a thousand 'what if's' and 'why didn't I's' go through your head constantly.

Normal is having the TV on the minute you wake up and the last thing .. you go to sleep at night, the need for noise because the silence is deafening.

Normal is every happy event in my life always being backed up with sadness lurking close behind because of the hole in my heart.

Normal is telling the story of your babies death as if it were an everyday common place activity and then gasping in horror at how awful it sounds.

And yet realizing it has become part of our normal.

Normal is each year coming up with the difficult task of how to honor your child's memory and their birthday and survive those days. And trying to find the balloon or flag that fits the occasion.

Happy Birthday? Not really.

Normal is disliking jokes about death, funerals. Bodies being referred to as cadavers when you know they were once someone's loved one.

Normal is being impatient with everything, but someone stricken with grief over the loss of their child.

Normal is feeling a common bond with friends in England, Australia, Netherlands, Canada, and all over the USA, but yet never having met any of them face to face.

Normal is a new friendship with another grieving mother and meeting for coffee and talking and crying together over our children and our new lives. And worrying together over our living children.

Normal is being too tired to care if you paid the bills, cleaned house or did laundry or if there is any food in the house.


Normal is wondering this time whether you are going to say you have 2 or 3 children because you will never see this person again and it is not worth explaining that one of them is in heaven. And yet when you say only 2 to avoid that problem you feel horrible as if you have betrayed that child.


And last of all normal is hiding all the things that have become normal for you to feel, so that everyone around you will think that you are "normal".


These things are what is 'normal' for me now.

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My Definition Of Missing You

In our lives from childhood through our adulthood we cross paths with many people, some are relatives and some are just friends; as time passes we lose touch with those we have met, they move on, some may be right around the corner while others may be on the other side of the world.

When we part we say our goodbyes and say I’ll miss you, you may stay in touch for a time but a day turns into a month and a month turns into years and you lose touch altogether but you have hope that some day maybe soon and maybe years later you will get a knock on the door or someone taps you on the shoulder at the supermarket and when you open that door or you turn around you find that one person you lost touch with, that person you said I’ll miss you so long ago; that is the hope and you hang onto that for a life time because you know their out there somewhere.

In my life I have had such hope but when Danielle died my hope of her knock on the door or that tap on the shoulder is gone.

I miss:

Her smile & laughter

As she would enter a room , she calling me stupid as I called her rama (short for geek a rama)

As we talked and the hand would go up and she would say “Whatever”

She would sit on the couch to the left of me on the love seat with her legs resting on the coffee table and I would reach over with my foot and tap her thigh and make a sound

(NaNaNa) she would laugh and tighten up her leg muscles and say “do it again” and I would with the same sound (NaNaNa) then she would grab her thigh with both hands and pull it tight with all she had and a face to match and say “Try it again” I would but nothing on her leg would move and she would say “See I’m not fat”

I would be standing in the living room and she would sneak up and punch me in the arm and turn and run as fast as she could down the hallway towards her bedroom as I chased her, she would squeal and scream all the way fearing that I would catch her.

I would turn down our street and see her walking home after getting off the school bus and I would slowly pass her, looking in the mirror to see her reaction from not giving her that short ride was priceless; the look with her hands in the air and acting like she would be walking for miles instead of 100 feet

When ever she approved of something I was doing or something I would do she would hold her right hand up and point at me with her index finger and thumb up and wink while making a clicking noise (two at a time) while shaking her finger up and down with each click.

She would stand in front of me in the living room and start to throw punches towards me and dance around while I stood there watching her then she would stop and say “Yeah I thought so” and strut away like she won (what she won I have no idea)

If she wanted money for shopping she would ask her Mom but Mom would say if you can get the money from Dad then we can go so she would walk into the living room as I watch TV and sit down and say “DADDY” can Mom have some money? Knowing that once she said “DADDY” I knew what the money was for (she always got it)

As night came and it was time for bed she would come up to me and wrap her arms around my neck, stand on her tippy toes so she could get close to my ear and whisper “I love you Dad” and then slide back enough to kiss me on the cheek. I would tell her I love her and tap her on the butt, she would walk away with a smile.

These are just a few of the things I miss, so as I lay in bed at night staring into the darkness and I mouth “I miss you” that is a miss you with no hope

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Knocked Down

In my life I have been knocked down more times than I can count and I always get back up, dust myself off and move forward.

On January 1^st I was knocked down once again but this time I can’t get back up, I don’t see getting back up again.

I use to live life to what it had to offer, to love my wife and kids and to protect them from harm, to provide for them and give them everything that I could, that was my life’s goal but now I live to exist and just to exist only.

I no longer fear death but now I wait for it, if I was walking down the street and a bus jumped the curb out of control I wouldn’t get out of the way or if there was a wrong way driver on the freeway I wouldn’t avoid it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not looking for death but if it presents itself I am ready to go.

I am not the only one that has this thought; if you ask anyone who has lost a child they would give the same response.

I now think of life from a different angle and I have asked myself this one question; I think of my life as I form two columns, one column contains all of the times in my life that I was truly happy without any type of negative thought just pure happiness, then in the other column I place all the times that I was sad, depressed, angry, jealous, envious, worried, hurt and fearful and what I have found is that most of my life has been consumed by negativity with very little happiness, so why is life like this?

If you sit down and figure your life I think you will come to the same conclusion.

The greatest gift that God has given me in my life would be my wife, with that she has given me many beautiful, honest, loving children and I may only exist in life now I also exist for my family.

With each child God has given me I quietly thanked him and promised him that I would do the best I could to raise them & guide them in their lives then one was taken and I cant figure out why, I was told that when I see her again that she wont even know that time has past that it would be a blink of an eye and if that is so then why must I go day to day with the pain inside and what seems like a forever.

The one year of my little girls death is just around the corner and I am getting nervous not knowing if I am going to be able to handle it, I still hold out hope that she will come home soon but that thought also comes with a thought that she wont, that she is gone for a lifetime and that still and always will scare me.

No one gave me a manual on how to raise children but I learned as I went along but I know that I have what everyone else has deep inside them and that is to love and protect my children no matter what it may cost including my life.

As a father and a man I can fix anything I put my mind to so I have looked at my daughters death from the moment I was told she had died that I have to fix this, I figured if I tweak it, bend it, twist it, poke it, manipulate it, think it through or even read the instructions (men don’t read the instructions) then I can fix it.

I always had the thought that if I couldn’t fix it then it wasn’t worth fixing and it was time to get a new one.

How can I have that thought now? How dare I throw this problem away! I have to fix it. But how?

I did everything right, I raised her, protected her, would do anything for her but most importantly I loved her with all that is me so the same question I ask myself every day all day long is; WHY?

I hope she knew that I loved her.

God has placed many new as well as old friends in my life this year and for that I am truly grateful but if this is an exchange for my daughter then I will give it all back, If I must go on and exist then I will stand tall for my daughter and help others as she had in her short life.

I always thought I was strong and could handle anything but now I find that I am not as strong as I had thought and I have also found that a simple hug does incredible things so don’t be shy in life because a simple hug and smile is the greatest gift you can give another.

Although I have been knocked down and I can’t get back up I will do what I can while lying down.

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I don’t know who the author is but it’s a great poem.

God's Calling You

We little knew that morning,

God was going to call your name,

In life we loved you dearly,

In death we do the same,

It broke our hearts to lose you,

You did not go alone,

For part of us went with you,

The day God called you home,

You left us beautiful memories,

Your love is still a guide,

And though we cannot see you,

You’re always by our side,

The family chain is broken,

And nothing seems the same,

But as God calls us one by one,

If I Knew

If I knew it would be the last time

That I'd see you fall asleep,

I would tuck you in more tightly

and pray the Lord, your soul to keep.

If I knew it would be the last time

that I see you walk out the door,

I would give you a hug and kiss

and call you back for one more.

If I knew it would be the last time

I'd hear your voice lifted up in praise,

I would video tape each action and word,

so I could play them back day after day.

If I knew it would be the last time,

I could spare an extra minute to stop and say "I love you,"

instead of assuming you would KNOW I do.

If I knew it would be the last time

I would be there to share your day,

well I'm sure you'll have so many more,

so I can let just this one slip away.

For surely there's always tomorrow

to make up for an oversight,

and we always get a second chance

to make everything just right.

There will always be another day to say "I love you,"

And certainly there's another chance to say our "Anything I can do?"

But just in case I might be wrong, and today is all I get,

I'd like to say how much I love you and I hope we never forget.

Tomorrow is not promised to anyone, young or old alike,

And today may be the last chance

you get to hold your loved one tight.

So if you're waiting for tomorrow, why not do it today?

For if tomorrow never comes, you'll surely regret the day,

That you didn't take that extra time for a smile, a hug, or a kiss

and you were too busy to grant someone, what turned out to be their one last wish.

So hold your loved ones close today, and whisper in their ear,

Tell them how much you love them and that you'll always hold them dear

Take time to say "I'm sorry," "Please forgive me," "Thank you," or "It's okay."

And if tomorrow never comes, you'll have no regrets about today.

--Anonymous from the Internet

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