Candle Lighting Ceremony

Tomorrow is the Candle Lighting Ceremony that happens once a year on the second Sunday of the month. It's done around the world annually to remember those children who have gone before us. Children. Babies. Our hopes and dreams. Today we received six books from the Bereavement Program at CHOP (Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia). Lucas is on page 41. His picture and something I wrote. Here is what I wrote. And I'll include the picture as well. Let me just digress right here and tell you, in order to find this picture again, I had to look through all of his pictures. I stumbled across a picture we took of him on his last day of life. My heart is hurting now. Like a balloon that needs to pop there is too much air in it and you can't exhale or inhale. Hurts. He was so sick. For the millionth time, I ask, why could we not see it? We wanted him to live live live. So blind.

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Here is what I wrote for the Memorial Book.

10/15/02-8/21/03
Lucas Andrew

Submitted by Jennifer; Mother


If words could only express the ache and the wisdom that have come with your death. If they could only express the love we still have for you, the missing we still feel for you. If, if, if, we could only recapture a small bit of your pixie dust before you left us-and put it in a little glass jar so we could watch the beauty of you whenever we needed to be reminded or wanted to remember deeply your essence.

You know we love you. You know we miss you. I know we’ll see you again one day. As our lives go on, the more we know. The answers become fractionally clearer with each day and we trust that it truly was meant to be this way.

For you we live and breathe, for you we go on, and as we get through our days, we imagine you are with us, on our shoulders, watching over us. In this, we believe. Always in our hearts; forever you are.

Jenn

The books are gorgeous and so appropriate. They have evolved from mini booklets to now bound books. Chock full of pictures, poems, beautifully written stories and synopsis' of children and in memory of them; for them. To read it, slowly page by page, it would really blow your mind. There is this whole other world that if you are the parent of a healthy child, never to be in a hospital, let alone a Childrens Hospital, you are just oblivious to. I was there once. Completely oblivious. Completely unaware and taking the world for granted. It's a good place to be actually. When something happens and your world changes and goes off kilter for a moment in time, then you realize, you see that it's no joke, there are thousands of other familes going through the same thing at the same time you are. I remember thinking that it was the most earth shattering moment to realize, there was this whole other world. A shushed one. No one in MY immediate family or friends even knew this world existed; until Lucas came along. This book will teach you to one by one put one foot in front of the other, you aren't the only one. You do have to live your life. We all must go on. So there you have it. May all the angels in Heaven, all the little ones, may they be living a life like no other. For all the pain they went through to get to where they are, it's far deserved. And for them, we go on, knowing we'll see them again. And as for me and mine, we believe. To our very core.

I thank you Malinda Hill. You have helped to make this easier than I think it might have been without you or your efforts. On behalf of myself and all the other parents who year after year participate, make the trip to Philly, who take a moment at 7:00 pm every second Sunday of the year and say a prayer while holding a candle, we thank you.

--Just a Mom

Jenn