Six Years

At about 9:30 at night on Wednesday May 3, 2000, my beautiful 5 year old son Joshua was declared dead. The doctors and nurses in the ICU stopped trying to resuscitate him, and one of my favorite nurses came out to the nurses station to tell me that he was gone. Since all the rooms were only closed off by glass sliding doors, I had seen their valiant efforts, and there was really no reason to tell me that. No reason, I guess, except for the closure. The "hearing" the words said even when you don't want to hear anything. The brain tumor had finally won the battle.

Thinking about it now, it dawns on me that they hadn't pulled the curtains when they ran the code, and so the entire ICU had front row seats. At that time of the evening though, there were not many people left. Just kids sleeping, many in drug induced stupors.

Funny how I hadn't thought of that before.

I took myself to see "Stick It" today. Figured stupid comedy was just what I needed to take my mind off all that ails me. I managed to laugh a couple times, not sure I would actually advise anybody to go see the movie though! Overall it was pretty bad :-)

Princess tried gymnastics practice after school today. I kept her home from school 'til 10:30 - but she insisted that she wanted to try. They are practing their "routines" (and I use the word loosely) for the spring show, which is on June 1; and of course she did NOT want to miss a practice. She hung in there pretty good overall. Bedtime was a nightmare. She whined about everything, but I figured that would happen as tired as she was.

While mom & dad are still in Florida they are having a tree taken down. When we popped over after gymnastics to get their mail, the tree dudes were there, chain saws in hand and chipper at the ready. They had already brought a good portion of it down. Princess looks at me and says "can we just make sandwiches here and watch them out the kitchen window while we're eating?" What can I say? She's easily amused!

Despite all that, today has been tough. Six years seems so unreal. One of the boys we carpool with is in 5th grade, and I often try to wrap my mind around the fact that my son should be this old. He enjoys picking on princess more than picking on his own sister (perhaps because his sister learned to ignore him years ago? lol). I really have no idea how much my life would be different with two kids.

I just don't have the energy to talk about this anymore tonight. Thank you to all of you for lending me your support today through kind words. I could not ask for a better group of cyber friends :-)