Ashley Forever: The Heart Of Ou Home Is Missing

Day 169~

Yesterday after I got home from the cemetery, I sat in my car in the driveway. I do this quite often. Our house has become so empty feeling. So lonely. It is so very evident that the heart of our home is missing. Is no longer there. So, I sit in the car because when I enter our home, the emptiness & loneliness is immediately felt. Outside that door, I can convince myself that this isn’t real. It is what helps me to function. But the minute you walk through that front door, the ability to pretend is no longer possible.

Many things in life that are broken can be fixed, but some things cannot. Think of a family as being connected by links. Each link unique. incapable of being replaced because there are no two links alike. Those links that connect us form a circle. Inside that circle is our life as a family. It holds our love for each other. It is everything that represents who we are as a family. We can add links to make that circle of our life grow bigger, our family grow bigger. The links of our children are the strongest links that hold that circle, that family, together. When one of those strength bearing links is removed from that circle, that circle is no longer enclosed, everything is open and part of what that family was, part of what made that family whole, escapes that circle. That circle is then forever broken because that unique link, is gone and can never be replaced to connect that circle that made them a FAMILY. Ashley was a link to many of you. If you read my post before this you will know why.

Our strongest link was taken away from us. The family we were is forever gone. We are forever broken, incapable of being made whole again. We are still a family. There is still love. But there is and always will be a void, an emptiness, a loneliness. A part of our family, of our love, of our hearts, a part that made us whole, will be forever missing. OUR Ashley.

I have tried to come up with a way to describe the journey we are traveling. It is not easy to put in words what life on this earth is like without Ashley. No words can fully describe the pain, the emptiness, the loneliness. Nothing can describe the emotions that you go through, the unnatural existence you live in when a child, a sibling is taken away from you.

The best way I can describe how the world looks like to me is this: say you are sitting in your living room and outside the windows of your house it is gloomy & raining. Dark & depressing. Then say you are watching a Live TV Show and it is in Sunny Florida & everything is beautiful & everyone is happy. But it isn’t what you are experiencing. You are not part of what they are experiencing. I am the person that is sitting in the gloomy darkness of the living room, looking at the world outside of my life as they are in a different place, in the Sunshine, experiencing happiness, living their lives (as they should be, I am not saying they shouldn’t be). But I am frozen in time, in this constant gloom & darkness.

Every day I cry, multiple times a day. But then several times a day, the true reality of my Ashley, who was once here with me, living, breathing, talking, existing, is no longer here, hits me. The best way I can describe those moments is this. For those of you who watch Once Upon a Time, you will really understand this. You know when the Queen takes her fist & thrusts it into someone’s chest & pulls out their heart & crushes it. That is the best way to describe the very evident pain you can imagine that would cause. That is what I experience when that reality hits me, multiple times a day. This is beyond the tears, pain and heartache I feel from missing my Ashley. This is the reality that your once very real, living, breathing, Child, no longer exists in this world you live in and you will never again, see, hear, kiss, hug, them again.

This is My reality. My Families reality. It is never going to change. I share my journey, my pain with each of you in hopes that it will make a difference. I hope that it will make everyone realize how precious life is. I hope it makes other’s not take their lives, their happiness, their children for granted. I hope that it makes you want to help make a difference in the lives of children fighting cancer, or to help children and others in some other way. I tell my story because I want the world to know and remember MY AMAZING DAUGHTER ASHLEY. We live in a world full of so much hate & anger right now. I do not want all the bad in the world to over shadow all the Good. Ashley Is the GOOD. She defined the Good. Maybe, just maybe, Ashley’s Story & Our Families Journey, Can Encourage some more GOOD.

~BE THE GOOD~

I Love & Miss You So Much My Sweet Beautiful Ashley, My Baby Girl, My Missy Moo. Our Family Link Is Forever Broken Without You Here with Us. But You Live FOREVER IN OUR HEART