Hope

For Christmas this year, an amazing group of moms from our school gave us a gift basket filled with goodies of all kinds. Gifts for the kids, food, gift cards and an ornament.
The ornament is real pretty and made from glass. The writing on the ornament says "Hope". That made me think.
What is hope all about ? I came to the conclusion that there are lots of different levels of hope. After going into my own feelings, searching for the meaning of the word hope for me, I thought, oh no, I have not had real hope in a long time.... really what I was looking for is that huge, big, tremendous feeling of hope that is now missing from my life. The last time I had the real big strong feeling of hope was in the hospital when I was sitting next to my boy, holding his hand day after day, sleeping by his feet because all the tubes and machines did not leave me room by his side, rubbing his swollen feet and legs, that is when I had real hope, hope that he would wake up, hope that he would make it through, hope that the doctors would find a small part of his brain still working, that small part that can make up for the parts that were dead, anything, any movement, any good news, a breath on his own, a flicker of the eye, an ever so slight twitch of his finger... I would have taken anything, that was my hope. The hope vanished as the faces of the nurses and doctors did not change from the somber looks they were giving us. Looks that spoke of sadness and sorrow, looks that showed compassion, grief, and helplessness at the situation we were in.
Now, the big huge heart lifting feeling of hope is not ever coming to me again.
There are medium sized feelings of hope... let's hope the kids like the winter getaway, hope that we have some laughs together, hope that there will be few arguments and hope for lots of harmony.
Then there is the little feeling of hope, the everyday feeling of hope. I hope the kids remember to put their coats on at recess, I hope that the weather is nice for our hike. I hope that I have a good day at work today...
Then there are the constant hopes, the ones that never go away. I hope no one in my family will get hurt today. That no one has a sad day, that everyone comes home in one piece. Those are always there and never go anywhere...
So hope is all around us, in different sizes and different measures....Just in my heart, the big hope is gone... the hope for a family of 6 living happily ever after.....
There is however, one feeling of hope that I always have in my heart, it is constant and strong, the hope that my Luca is in a good place, the hope that he is feeling well and the hope that he can hear me when I talk to him every day, that he knows how much we love and miss him, and the regrets I have of not telling him every day how much I love and cherish him, and also the hope that he is healed and happy !!!

Work

Yesterday at work I did not make it on time, and I was repremented by my manager for being late. It was just 3 minutes, but it was a very humbling experience. I have not been in a working situation that required
that much discipline in a while and it reminded me of acting responsible and setting a good example for the
young co-workers I have. I understand that I have to follow the rules and sometimes that is really hard for me. I am glad this happened because I have been living my life a little bit different since August, a little bit
less caring in regards to the world around me. I have been feeling like since I lost my child, I should receive different treatment, and many people have been treating me that way too. They encourage me to do what I feel like :  "You want to yell and scream and be angry? Do it, because you just went through the worst thing ever, go ahead", "you want to tell people to leave you alone? Speak your mind, because you just lost your child, you are entiltled to do that".
In a way I felt good about having a "get out of jail" card in regards to my everyday actions. But at one point,
this has to come to an end, I will have to be a good citizen again very soon.

Christmas Kindness

during the past few days I have had several of my friends giving me gifts and being extremely kind to me, not that they are already always kind to me since Luca died, but they have been trying to do extra special nice things for me. I love that they care about me and want me to be happy, giving me little gifts and watch my kids for me so I can take care of last minute preparations for our trip.
I am so thankful to have these great people in my life. I love to give too and will give them what I would like to give them not this year but as soon as my life becomes a bit more sorted out and hopefully next year around this time I can return their kindness because I love to give and recently I have been mostly only on the receiving end.

We went to church yesterday and the topic was Christmas and the gifts. It was said that it is much more important to do meaningful things over Christmas time than just get gifts and get more gifts. This is hard to explain to children, but now I am trying to make sure that my kids learn how important and joyful it is to give a gift and watch another person unwrap it and see the smile on their face, just to feel good about giving. I think my kids are mostly focused on getting gifts and getting as much as they can, which makes me sad. I think I should have started a long time ago to teach them that giving is more fun than receiving. That great feeling you get when someone loves your gift you picked for them, the "just perfect" thing, but even if it is not the perfect gift, just the gesture of giving and sharing and thinking of another over yourself and your own wants and desires, is important to teach our kids.
I am hoping I will teach them to be more thoughtful during gift GIVING time and pay attention to the joy of giving, not just the quantity of packages they get to unwrap.
Let's hope they get it... or at least a taste of it....

What about the Spirit ?

I woke up at 4am and my thought was there immidiately. Was that carrying over from a dream I could not remember? I don't know what made me think of this but I was wondering, when our boy took his last breath in his room, did his spirit leave his body and he was hovering over the body that his father discovered, watching him frantically trying to revive him, screaming out his name in agony ?
When the paramedics found a pulse, did his spirit enter the body again, like so many people speak of after their own near death experiences ? Did his spirit hear all the things I told him over the 5 days in the hospital? All the " I love you so much" " please come back" "please stay with us" "I do anything for you to survive" ??
Did he actually still hear this, or was his spirit long gone and only the machines made him look like he was just sleeping ?
I thnk about that all the time, the moments when I had my last chance to tell him all these important things, things I might not have told him when he was doing fine, hanging out around the house, waiting for summer break to be over. ...
I really hope he heard me, he heard how much I love him and how much I need him, how we have that special connection that I have with no one else in this world.

Let's get started

Ok, so I plan to write things about my everday life, things that come to my mind, an also about our situation as a family, but not exclusively.
I hope this is going to be a healthy way to speak from my heart and use this blog as a sounding board.

This blog will be connected to our Lucastrong website, and I am hoping to hear from people with suggestions, opinions, questions, kind and not so kind words, that will be ok.