April 24, 2011

Happy Easter everyone,

I hope all of you celebrated with family or friends and for those of you in Michigan that you were able to get out and enjoy the warmer temps and sunshine this weekend. This date is significant in my mind, strange how some dates you will always remember no matter how much time passes. The ones that aren't significant with your graduation, or wedding, or a birthdate but a date where something so profound happened to you that it is forever etched in your memory. This is one of those for me because today marks the two year anniversary of Charlotte surviving dilated cardiomyopathy and her heart failure. The time moved so incredibly slow that first night two years ago and at this point I'm not even sure we were up in the ICU yet, but I think we had just arrived and were finding out the nightmarish news and prognosis of our beautiful, smiley baby girl who had no idea how sick she ACTUALLY was.

This weekend we were lucky enough to have my brothers home from Chicago and celebrated Saturday with my in laws. It was a gorgeous day, the kids got kites from grandma and grandpa Walsh and it was so nice to walk to the park and watch them fly. As in most days and throughout their passing I notice things related to Charlotte's illness, and sometimes can't brush them off immediately. I pushed her in the stroller to the park, and while my niece Genna (also 2) was hightailing it football field lengths on foot without stopping Charlotte barely walked around for ten minutes before proclaiming that "I tired", "I cold Momma". The call signs that it's time for a break, that she can't keep up. Along with "I watch TV", or "I lay down".

While Alaina, Jake, Alexis flew their kites and Genna walked a mile, Charlotte sat in her stroller bundled in her blanket and although no one else would've known the wiser "I know" she just told me "hey Mom, I'm tired out". These are the daily reminders that your child is sick, the reasons that you can not forget and go on about your life as if all is okay and well. I constantly worry about overdoing it, about pushing her too far, and yet she continues to ask for what she needs, and do with what she can, and NEVER COMPLAINS about it (yet;). She sat there cheering the kids on from her throne, smiling and as excited as if she herself were flying them, controlling their dips and waves, and steady glides.

And I sat there taking pictures of my nieces and children, brothers, sister, and father in law thinking how lucky we are to have each other. To have a day where the weather was beautiful, the wind was perfect and we were there to enjoy each others company even if we didn't say a lot. I haven't felt that at peace in awhile, it's been a long while. My life feels like that kite with dips so low that it feels it might hit the ground, and other times soaring so high that it might touch heaven for a moment. It's hard to live life on these winds of shown uncertainty.

Today we celebrated with my family, my aunts and uncles, cousins and my grandparents in their 80's. Again just standing still for a moment in my own silence listening to the sounds of the house, to the kids going crazy outside. My aunts and uncles talking about their lives, what the kids are up to. Meet the Robinsons in the family room (one of my all time favorite movies). I so often find myself just standing in a place where everyone else is moving and all I can concentrate on is the noise, the joyful, loving noise that we all put forth. The noise that people just don't stop and listen to anymore. I know I noticed it all before this happened to Charlotte, and therefore to us but now it is so prevalent in my life. I'm struggling with all of the wind gusts, rocking us around and sometimes it is so overwhelming I just want to smash on the pavement in a pile of tattered brightly colored fabric. Then at other times it's like perfect silence, I'm just gliding along in beautiful calm where I feel like heaven is watching me whispering that it's all going to be all right.

I am so proud of Charlotte, and Alaina and Jake for who they are. That Charlotte can just sit there watching all of her fellow little people running amuck and not be able to keep up with them but still cheers them on with a smile on her face and joy in her voice as she yells with them. She inspires me. I am so proud that I have family who never concentrates on how sick she is but can take her for a walk to the swings and push her for an hour without even thinking how strange it is that she doesn't request getting off to run around. Or who will go retrieve a ball for her a hundred times not realizing that she can't continuously do it herself all afternoon.

I am so proud of my husband for CONSTANTLY handling all of this life with its incessant wind. For always fighting right along with me to hold this weaved fabric of our lives steady when the gusts pick up. I know it is not easy for him, just as it is not easy for me. I never expected to be challenged in this way, to question every aspect of my being. I know that I am proud to have all of our loved ones and friends who put up with it, who stay even though it's not always a picnic to know us. Seeing those brightly colored kites flying high reminded me so much of how our lives are entwined within each others. How each person or tiny action reflects a strand of thread and as a whole we help keep each other soaring.

I love all of you and will forever be grateful for all that you give me:)

XOXO
Courtney