"come wis me" ~ava shaye

Love this precious face. 

She is having a blast. 

"Holding on tight" she would say.

Wow...it's not often I can watch video's of Ava. Sometimes, it brings back such emotion, I can't seem to bear it. Yesterday, for no reason at all, other than just "missing" and yearning to hear that sweet, precious voice, I watched the end of the sledding video. I knew she said "mommy, mommy, mommy" over and over at the end...and I wanted to hear it again. I wanted to hear her voice say my name....so I turned it up real loud as I watched and listened...tears rolling down my face as I hear the sweet words "mommy, come wis me". "mommy, mommy, mommy". Oh Ava, how I would give up everything in this world to come with you right now. I would. I know...Aynslee needs me here...I'm torn, but I *wish* there was a way...

I had a dream last night with Ava in it...haven't had one of these in a while. I dreamed that something happened to me...and an angel was holding her on her hip. I put my arms out and said, "Ava, let mommy hold you" and I picked her up and held her in my arms. Kissing her, loving on her...then I woke up..well, Aynslee actually woke me up. I was so upset that I got interrupted from that dream...so, last night, I got to hold her, feel her, and kiss her. I was "with" her in my dream. Strange how I thought about those words all day yesterday..."mommy, come wis me" and I had a dream where I was with her...in her world...not mine. 

~Sweet Ava, I would love to come "wis" you...I.miss.you. 

my sunshine (really)

Well, oftentimes it's hard for me to parent Aynslee the same as I did Ava. Sometimes, I think I feel as though Aynslee is my "replacement child" (Ava will NEVER be replaced...there is NO replacement for her). I don't mean to feel this way, I just do. I have to catch myself from calling them the same nicknames. I am accustomed to parenting one child (Ava)....then she got taken from me, and 5 weeks later I had another child....what's a mama supposed to do? 

I called Ava *angel* all of the time. To be more specific, *precious angel*. She woke up in the morning, "Good morning precious angel"....while I was in the shower, "come here and let me kiss you, mama's precious angel". The week after her surgery, I grabbed her cheeks as I was marveling at her one morning, and said, "oh how I love you my precious angel". She looked up at me with those big blue eyes and said, "precious angel?". YES, Ava, you are mama's precious angel! So, I feel bad when I slip and say that to Aynslee. I have been thinking that I need a nickname for her...something that fits...something more than Ayns (I call her this often...as much as I called Ava, Ava Shaye). So I decided Aynslee is my "sunshine". "She IS my sunshine, (my only sunshine), she makes me happy when sky's are gray (all the time)". 

So, while Aynslee will never be a replacement, she will never be my angel, but I am perfectly happy calling her my sunshine. She brings me happiness when nothing else does. She makes me smile when I think I can't. So Ava, you are mama's *precious angel* and Aynslee, you are mama's *sunshine*. So (God), please don't take my sunshine away. 

Aynslee's first trip to the beach

Missing our sweet Ava at the beach

Lookin more and more like Ava everyday. Sweet sisters. 

We Win!!

“The Oscar For Best Attempt At Appearing Like A Normal Family When Everything Is On It’s Head“….

I guess I’m breathing a sigh of relief this week. We did it. We got through our mini vacation.   We squealed along with the kids playing in the sand, building sandcastles, drinking their juice boxes…all the while thinking “But where is Ava?”

I kept thinking back to the year before last, I have photos of her...playing in the sand, swimming at the pool, and having an absolute blast. On Wednesday, the day before we left, Aynslee and I went to the cemetery.  It is the most surreal, abnormal, wrong thing to do. To go to talk to your child at the cemetery before you leave for a "family" vacation.  To sit talking to the grass and wondering, wishing, refusing to believe. It’s just not right.

The first day was great, I really thought it was beautiful (the ocean)…It felt so nice to do something “normal”.

Then, I came crashing down and the next few days were like so many days at home..just going through the motions and lost in sadness. We still had a  nice time,  but I felt a bit fake…like a big pretender…I  was really thinking the whole time “Why isn’t Ava here”?

I will say something though, I’m getting used to this roller coaster.  I’m starting to realize there are bad days and there are better days. That the pain isn’t constantly unbearable…it wavers and it’s just too terrible sometimes and it’s a little okay sometimes. Luckily my “too terrible” days usually seem to land on Jim’s “little bit okay” days and vice versa so we pull each other out of the hole most of the time.

But there are still so many moments where I think I’m doing a bit better and I think of her and that she’s not here and she’s not coming back and that it happened to us (and to her)and I suck my breath in and my stomach does a flip. 

My sweet Ava, you were so dearly missed on our "family" vacation and you will always be missed. Our family will never be complete until we are all reunited again in Heaven. 

The Journey, The Regrets, The Gifts.

One of Ava's first pictures 

The Journey.

It all began with medicine, needles, and a wishing and hoping (of a different kind). A call, from the nurse, "your pregnant...the line is faint (Ava, you will never be faint to me)...but your pregnant". I couldn't believe the words I was hearing. Just two months prior, I had miscarried my "miracle pregnancy" and now, pregnant again. I was so excited, hopeful, yet scared all at the same time. My first pregnancy had taken the innocence out of this pregnancy. I knew how fast things could change. So I didn't get my hope up...UNTIL we went to our "determine the sex" ultrasound. Anyone who knows me already knows what a girly girl I am. And therefore, just how much it meant to me to have a girl. When the ultrasound technician told me she was a she, I just couldn't believe it! a GIRL!!!!! I was super excited to start my pink journey! 

I spent weeks, nah months, getting her nursery ready. I ordered the very best nursery bedding from California. The VERY best furniture from overpriced pottery barn kids, and I turned an average room into an absolute PALACE. It was pink...it was perfect. It was everything I’d ever wanted. Complete.

Her birth was hard. I'm not going to lie. I labored for hours all day long. I ran a fever. I started to push for 2 hours, and her heart rate was high. It was time for a C-section. I didn't care, I just wanted to meet my baby girl...my long anticipated and awaited baby princess.  I took her home and marvelled. For two years and four months, we marvelled. We adored and spoilt and thanked the heavens above that we had been so super blessed. 

She was everything I had ever wanted in a girl and more. She LOVED her clothes, she LOVED pink, she LOVED princesses, she LOVED shoes ("shiny shoes"), and she LOVED to dance. She could out-girl me any day. She was so beautiful to look at...we would just stop and stare, so often, and no matter how many photos of her I’d already shown Jim, I’d have to show him “just one more”. She was so loved at her school and when she would come home smelling like Mrs. Misty's  perfume with her hair bow perfectly in place, I’d smile knowing she’d been cuddled and made over that day.

Mrs. Misty  taught her “ABC's” and to hear her sing it would make you melt, honestly. She would sing it while we were in Target...like she was bored and needed to hear some sort of music. She would shake her head back and forth, and sing at the top of her lungs. I told her "shhhh" in target that day, because I was tired of hearing her sing them....what I would give (anything) to hear them again. I only said a few weeks back that I needed to videotape her (I never did). She was so loving to her baby (unborn)sister – and her cousins. She kissed Addison ALL of the time. Austin scared her wearing a halloween costume (black spiderman) and she would shake her little head and say, "no Ausin, don't (s)care me".  She would run to you as fast and hard as she can, hug your neck, flip her feet up behind her and say, "Biiiiig dinosaur hugs". She was so sweet and beautiful and amazing. 

The Regrets.

I know people say not to have them. That they are pointless and will drive me absolute crazy. But they are there. Not about that day, not really. I know we were doing nothing other than living out a normal day. That I believed she was safe and sound. That I tried my absolute very best, every single day of her life, to keep her safe. So I don’t really feel like I could have done that day differently.

What I do regret though is "the surgery". I know, I know, you can't change your "number"...only God knows your number, but I can only *wonder* if things would have turned out different if we didn't choose to get her tonsils out. 

I wish I’d taken her to Disney world to see the princesses.  I was just waiting until she got “easier”, when she got older...I was expecting a tomorrow...

Not getting enough pictures of her and Addison, and her and Aynslee (in my belly). I guess I thought I had time.

I regret not letting her wear (out) whatever she wanted every single day – why did I think it mattered? She wore what she wanted at home, but oftentimes she would want to try new "outfits" out for school, and I had to explain to her that she had to wear what mommy picked out. That worked for now-but I wish I would have just let her do what she wanted. 

I just regret these things for me. Not for her. She had everything she needed. She had love. SOOOOOOOO much love. Every single day, she was loved. She was happy. She was cherished and adored. We gave her the best of life everyday. She knew no different. But for me, I am sad.

The Gifts.

I can't believe I am writing this, but along with the agonising pain that comes with losing her, there are Gifts. I try to see them, even if I don't want to acknowledge they are there. 

I am more patient. I am more forgiving, of others and myself. I see beauty in so many things I took for granted. I am real and honest and open, more than ever before. I have made amazing, deep, unexpected friendships. I didn’t think I could love Jim any more but I do. I am a deeper, better person. BUT, i also feel that it didn't take THIS...losing Ava to make me a "better" person...it just did. 

There are so many other gifts I could talk about on a practical level – there are beautiful people doing amazing things behind the scenes to make Ava's splash pad a reality. . We are so committed to wanting wonderful things to come out of Ava’s tragedy. We are committed to keeping her sweet memory alive and letting everyone in this community know just how special she really was. 

These things I call “Gifts From Ava’. She sends them every single day.

I like to imagine that one day my memories of the journey I shared with Ava and the gifts she continues to give me are enough. That the regrets fade and that great things have become, because of Ava. But, I'm just not sure. It's not enough to remember Ava with smiles and fond memories...I *NEED* the tears. I.miss.her.

One of the last pictures of Ava

How Do I Live Without You

Austin and Ava...sweet cousins forever!

on our way to the beach...2008

A lifetime of Grief...

Ava at the Wilson County Fair...eating a funnel cake. 

It's been 5 months...since I last held, touched, kissed my sweet Ava...150 days...3, 600 hours...How?

I  have “met” many friends who live in the same universe as me – the one that includes all the elements of an old life - but is now seen through a filter called Grief.   Friends who have lost their children to tragedy and illness.   I am connected to these friends in a way I can’t describe, nor need to.  We are just bonded.  When I see mourning parents on television, I relate in a way I never imagined – to know I could pick up my phone and call those complete strangers and  we could talk for hours.  We carry each others sorrow.   I know this sounds sad and awful.  But it’s not, it’s just a depth of understanding among a group of people that I don’t believe can be mirrored in many other sitations in life.

There have been 5 children gone too soon in this community in the past 5 months. Five children in five months!  I saw  today was the 18 year old's funeral...and I knew...how his parents felt...I knew just how impossible certain days can be.  Yet we still wake up the day after.  How?

Grief falls into a pattern in time.   The feeling of “floating”, as I call it, that stays for days, allowing you to carry on with life.  Then, for reasons known and sometimes not, the rug is pulled from you --ambushed– the Earth tilts the wrong way – the sky falls and you find yourself suffocating.  Quite litereally.  The "missing". The sense of their vacant space, their absence, the one they should be standing in, dancing in.  Where they should be laughing and growing and loving.  Where. They. Should. Be.

It’s indescribable and it’s unbearable and it’s so much more than we should have to endure, as humans.  As parents.  As fragile, hopeful, trusting people.  There is no ecaping, no cheering up, no stepping over.  When grief visits, everything stops.  And eventually, I guess, we become familiar with its presence and we allow it to pass through and ravage because we have no choice.  On the other side comes a sense of serenity and the "floating" returns, for a while.

Time makes it harder...for now. It’s hard to remember the "perfect" world...the world with my Ava, yet we could never forget.  Against what we thought possible, we carry on.

To many "floating" days to my bereaved friends.