Nightmare

Day 124~

Every Day I Wake Up & Pray That All of This Has Been A Nightmare. I Pray I Will Wake & Go To Ashley's Room & See Her Laying There Still Sleeping So Sound. That She Will Awake & Say Good Morning To Me & I Will See Her Beautiful Smile That Will Brighten The Start To My Day.

But Every Day I Awake & The Truth I Face Once More, That My Beautiful Ashley Is Gone & Her Face I Will See No More, Her Voice I WIll Never Hear, Her Smile I Will Never See. I Will Never Feel Another... Hug, I Will Never See Her Future Become What All Her Hopes & Dreams Wished For.

So I Live Each Day In Pain, Feeling Empty & Alone. I Try So Hard To Live For My Boy's Whom I Love So Much. But A Piece Of Me Has Left With My Precious Ashley. A Piece I Can Never Get Back. So My Boy's Didn't Just Lose A Sister, They Didn't Just Lose Their Best Friend, They Lost The Mom That They Once Knew, Because That Person Died Too When Their Sister Left This World.

There Is No New Normal, No Way To Just Forget. There is Just An Empty Space That Our Ashley Filled With So Much Love, Kindness, Caring & Her Beautiful Face. Memories Do Not Heal Your Heart, They Do Not Fill A Void. No One Can Ever Fill The Space of Her Love That Shined So Bright, That She Filled The World With Light. The Love We Felt For Ashley Can Never, Ever Be Replaced. It Will Always Just Remain A Dark & Empty Space.

I Love & Miss You Every Second Of Ever Day, My Sweet, Precious, Beautiful Ashley.

One of these days becomes none of these days

I Wrote & Shared This 2 Years Ago Today.

"One of These Days Becomes None Of These Days"

Don't put off the important things for the unimportant. How many times have we told Our Children, "Not today, I have to clean the house, I have to mow the lawn, I have to do this or that." I promise, We will go to the museum one of these days."

Then all the one of these days come and go and you never keep that promise. You never keep it because we put unimportant things before the most important things in our lives. "OUR CHILDREN". I... am not saying you should never clean the house or mow the lawn, but sometimes, we just need to put those things off till tomorrow. Live in the moment. Spend that time with your children, that may seem like no big deal at the time, but will become something not only your children will cherish but we will. Go To The Damn Museum.

WE NEVER KNOW WHAT TOMORROW HOLDS.

Ashley was so wise, wise beyond her years. She had every reason to be angry with the world, to be negative and she wasn't. SHE WASN'T.

When asked this question:

"How do you live your life knowing that tomorrow your cancer could take your life."

Her response:

"My life is no different than yours. None of us are promised tomorrow. You can walk out the door tomorrow and get hit by a car. The difference is, I appreciate my life more than most."

Ashley did appreciate her life more than most. She didn't live life by, "one of these days" she "Seized The Moment." She spent her time doing what she loved most, Spending Time With The People She Loves. It didn't matter what you were doing. It could be simply sitting around talking. That is what made her happy. The Simple Things. Being with the people she loves.

If you knew Ashley the way I knew Ashley. The way her Father & Brother's, Her Aunt's & Uncles, Her Cousins, then you would know what we lost. You would know the extent of our heartache.

I knew her better than anyone. I was closer to her than anyone. So I Lost The Most. My Heart Hurts the Most. My Life is the Loneliest. The Emptiest. I Feel More Pain than Anyone who has lost Ashley Could Ever Feel. We were SOULMATES, SOUL SISTERS.

So I am not going to wake up one day & be fine. I will never be fine. But for heaven sakes it has only been 125 days since My Everything, My Daughter, My Ashley, was taken away from me. So I am far from finding a way to get through every day with out excruciating pain. But for those of you who fear that I will do something horrible, don't worry. I could not inflict that pain on My Boy's.

You can help me by Honoring My Ashley. By living your life the way she did. By Helping Us In This Fight That She Sacrificed Her Life For. Be Like Ashley. "BE THE GOOD".

Ashley Was Everything We Wish We Could Be.

My Gifts

Day 123~

Ashley was one of the Most Beautiful Gifts This World Gave Me. It Gave Me Two More, Michael & Jake. However, Just as A Daughter & A Son Are The Most Beautiful, Most Precious, Most Valuable Gifts This World Can Give You. They Are Also The Gifts, That The Cruelest Thing This World Can Do To You, Is To Take Them Away From You.

It is worse than any physical pain that could be felt. In fact, the pain is not just the most heart wrenching, the most unbearable emotional pain... you will ever feel, it is physical as well. Every part of your body physically hurts.

I know that many have faded away. That many are tired of seeing my posts about my pain of living without My Daughter. Well I am Tired of it too, I AM TIRED OF LIVING WITHOUT MY DAUGHTER.

I hope you never have to feel the excruciating pain of living without one of your children. I pray that never happens to any of you. But only then would you truly understand.

I share my pain, my emotions for two reasons. I will share those reasons, but not now. I am too physically drained to type anymore.

I Miss & Love You So Much Baby Girl. My Sweet Beautiful Ashley. I Miss What Once Was. I Miss Our Happy, Simple Life. Our Crazy, Goofy, Enjoy Life, FAMILY. We Are Now & Forever, A Broken Home.

4 Months

Day 122~ 4 Months~

As Everyone Waits For Their World To Go Dark For A Couple Minutes, I Beg God To Make Mine Bright Again, By Giving My Ashley Back To ME. My Total Eclipse Happened 4 Months Ago and I Haven't Seen The Light Since.

I Love & Miss You SO, SO Very Much My Sweet Beautiful Ashley. You Didn't Deserve The Pain & Suffering This Life Gave You. You Are The Kindest, Most Caring, Most Selfless Person I Have Ever Known. You Gave & Gave To This World & All It Did Was Take F...rom You.

You Deserved So Much Better.

I Love <3 You ASHLEY, FOREVER.......

Enternal HELL

Day 121~

I have survived another day, if you call it surviving.

Each day is not getting easier. I am not learning to live with my pain. I am not learning to live in a world WITHOUT My ASHLEY. I do not know how someone can learn to live without their Daughter, Their Son, Their CHILD. I Will NEVER be able to function like a normal human being again. Not Without My Daughter Here. It is just not going to happen.

So, you saw me smile in a picture. It made you happy to see me smile. But what you don’t know, is that it took a Long Island Ice Tea to help me smile that phony smile. So, Unless you want me to become an Alcoholic, my smiles will be rare. Sometimes I can muster up a phony smile. I fight the pull my lips make to move downward. They shake ever so lightly in the opposite direction as I am pulling them upward to form a smile. But it is not real, not genuine. That is something I have learned to do, Put on a phony smile, laugh a phony laugh. I have gotten good at that.

Last night we went out with some friends a “See You Later” to a friend who is moving away. When we got to where we were meeting them, I was doing everything I could to hold the tears back. But they were coming and I couldn’t stop them, so I went to the bathroom to let them flow and to wipe the tears from my eyes. I didn’t want to ruin the evening.

The restaurant we were at, was the one we went to the last time we were out with family & Friends with Ashley. It was hard being there. After grabbing some tissue, I turned to walk out of the stall and I could see Ashley standing there washing her hands and talking to me. I don’t mean really see her, I mean like a vivid memory. That happens a lot, these vivid memories. It happens almost everywhere I go, with everything I do. That is because Ashley Was almost always with me. So, you are thinking, that is great, a memory of Ashley. But it is not great because it is a memory. I don’t want memories of my daughter. I WANT MY DAUGHTER, HERE, WITH ME.

So, I had to compose myself and stop the tears. I had to put myself in pretend mode. Pretend mode is where I convince myself that I am out with friends and Ashley is at home. Home with Jake, watching TV, Playing a Game. Just home. I do that a lot to try to get through a moment without completely losing my mind. I did it last night so that I didn’t ruin the evening for our Amazing Friend. But then that time ends and it is back to reality. Back to the fact that Ashley is not really at home waiting for me to come home. Back to the reality that MY ASHLEY IS GONE & All I WANT IS HER BACK HERE WITH ME.

Everyone wants me to find a way to move forward without My Ashley. Talk to someone. Talk to people who have gone through what I have gone through. People who understand. UNDERSTAND? Who the Hell Can UNDERSTAND, what I, Me, the person actually going through it, doesn't even understand. I don’t understand because this is not normal. We are not supposed to bury our CHILDREN. So if I don’t understand and I am living it, how the hell is someone else, who hasn’t walked my exact path, going to understand what I am going through?

Just because someone else lost their child, doesn’t mean they are going through the exact same emotions as me. We are all different. We all handle things differently. Feel things differently. Not even parents who have lost a child to cancer can fully understand my pain, as I can’t theirs. Everyone’s journey is different.

I am part of multiple bereaved parents Facebook pages. I thought it might help, but I think it makes it worse. Worse because now I am not only feeling my pain, but I am feeling their pain. I have always been one to feel other peoples pain very deeply. So those pages are increasing my pain to not only mine, but the pain of others.

People keep telling me I will learn to live without My Beautiful Ashley. That I will learn to function. Well if you call being in constant unbearable pain, LIVING, FUNCTIONING, well then I guess I am. But I have not, nor will I ever learn to LIVE WITHOUT MY ASHLEY. This is not living. It is Hell. It is Torture. It is, as I have said before, “THE LIVING DEAD”, “WALKING DEAD”. Whatever you want to call it. But it is not LIVING. It is a cruel form of punishment.

I want to know what Ashley did to deserve this? That is the big question, the most important question. Then I want to know what I did, to deserve being forced to live in a world without My Ashley. What did my Sweet, Kind, Generous, Selfless, Hero of a Daughter, do to deserve to have her life cut short. A life she so badly wanted to live. She never asked for anything in return. But all she wanted from this life was the chance to live. I am not perfect, but I have done my best to live this life as a kind, caring human being. I have spent a great deal of my life volunteering for many different things. All of us have spent the last 8 years running the foundation, volunteering with the help of family and friends. Wanting nothing in return. But you think at the very least, we would have been able to keep our Ashley here with us. No, instead, Ashley’s good will was punished with death and our good will, Mine, Mike’s, Michael’s, Jake’s, was punished by having to live in a world WITHOUT OUR ASHLEY. So Much for, “It is in giving that we receive.”

We can live without an arm, a leg. Without vision or hearing. We can even live without part of our lungs, with one kidney, etc.. But one very important thing we cannot live without, is our heart. Or even without part of our heart. Part of my heart died with Ashley. A BIG PART. So I cannot live WITHOUT PART OF MY HEART. So for those who say I will learn to live in this world without my Ashley, Will I? Will I truly be living? Is this called living? My Daughter, My Everything, She Is Gone. I yearn for her every single second of every day. That yearning never goes away. It is a pain that doesn’t stop. I want My Ashley Back. That is the only way to stop the pain. To Stop the yearning. To be ALIVE again. So since that can’t happen, I will suffer with excruciating, unbearable pain. I will spend my days crying and yearning for My Ashley. I Will Do All This Till The Day I Die.

So, to say I will learn to live with it is not true. Maybe some people, “Learn to LIVE with it.” But me, I don’t call that living. I CALL IT AN ETERNAL HELL

My Ashley Is So Beuatiful

Day 120~

My Ashley Is So Beautiful. I Miss My Girl So Much. Feel So Empty & Alone Without My Daughter, My Best Friend. I Still Can't Believe She is Gone. Everything Is a Constant Reminder That The Part of My Life That My Ashley Filled, Is Now Empty, Lonely, Excruciatingly Painful Space. That Is a Big Part of My Life, Since We Were Together Almost 24/7.

I Do Not Know How To Live In a World Without My Sweet Beautiful Ashley. I Will NEVER Understand Why My Ashley Had To Endur...e So Much Pain and Suffering and Why She Had To Be Taken Away From Us. NEVER. What Makes All of This Increasingly More Painful, Is The Fact That She Wanted To Live So Badly. One Of The Last Things She Said Was, "I Just Want The Chemo To Work."

This Eats Me Up Inside Every Second Of Every Day.

I Have My Two Beautiful Boy's. There Is Only One Thing Left That I Want, That I Need, To Make Me Whole. My Sweet Beautiful Ashley.

I Keep Thinking That This Must Be a Nightmare. But Then, Nobody Ever Wakes Me Up.

To All You Mom's Out There Who Are Blessed To Still Have A Sweet Beautiful Daughter, Or Daughter's and Son or Son's, Do Not Take That For Granted. Spend Every Single Second That You Can With Them and Tell Them That You Love Them and Are Proud of Them and Tell Them Often.

"Dying a Little More Each Day."

Continuing Your Legacy

Day 119~17 Weeks

Continuing Your Legacy Today Baby Girl. I Will Spend The Rest Of My Days Fighting For What You Died For & Making Sure The World Knows You Are A Genuine Hero.

I LOVE & MISS YOU SO MUCH MY SWEET BEAUTIFUL ASHLEY. MY HEART WILL ALWAYS FEEL THAT EMPTINESS, THAT VOID, WITHOUT YOU HERE.

SENDING HUGS AND KISSES TO YOU IN HEAVEN.

PS~I am drinking water Ashley.