What is five years?
When I was five, it was irrelevant. Time has no significance for the young.
When I was ten, it was forever. I couldn't wait to be a teenager and all grown up.
When I was twenty, it was a novelty. I planned for great things.
When I was twenty-five, it was a sentence. I was too close to thirty.
In five years you can earn a Bachelors degree. In five years you can master a new language. You can pay off debt or save up a small fortune.
When my oldest child turned five, we rejoiced, at Disney World!
When our second child turned five, we celebrated, a new bicycle was in order!
Where will you be in five years? What is your five-year plan? Do you have a five-year term on your auto loan? Five is a good, solid number. Not so close as to be scary, not so far as to be imaginary.
Today my third child turns five. Only he isn't here to celebrate. I am hard-pressed to rejoice. This did not fit into my five-year plan. My debt of grief will never be satisfied.
In three weeks other parents will be packing up their kinder-gardeners and crying over their first day of school. I'd love to have that cry. I don't get to pick between Cars and Toy Story backpacks. I don't get to pack an encouraging note with his first school lunch.
What I have for my five years is a badge of honor. I am a bereaved mother, who lived to tell her story. I am a mom to Five children, one of whom lives with my Father. I have an advanced degree in grief survival, a master's in living for the moment. I have learned a new language of compassion, the art of listening to what is felt, not what is said. Of looking past the facade and seeing the heart. I have something stored up in Heaven, a little deposit on eternity.
I have learned to love with abandon. I have learned to live without regret.
Happy Birthday Ian - you are forever loved. ~*~*~*~
When I was five, it was irrelevant. Time has no significance for the young.
When I was ten, it was forever. I couldn't wait to be a teenager and all grown up.
When I was twenty, it was a novelty. I planned for great things.
When I was twenty-five, it was a sentence. I was too close to thirty.
In five years you can earn a Bachelors degree. In five years you can master a new language. You can pay off debt or save up a small fortune.
When my oldest child turned five, we rejoiced, at Disney World!
When our second child turned five, we celebrated, a new bicycle was in order!
Where will you be in five years? What is your five-year plan? Do you have a five-year term on your auto loan? Five is a good, solid number. Not so close as to be scary, not so far as to be imaginary.
Today my third child turns five. Only he isn't here to celebrate. I am hard-pressed to rejoice. This did not fit into my five-year plan. My debt of grief will never be satisfied.
In three weeks other parents will be packing up their kinder-gardeners and crying over their first day of school. I'd love to have that cry. I don't get to pick between Cars and Toy Story backpacks. I don't get to pack an encouraging note with his first school lunch.
What I have for my five years is a badge of honor. I am a bereaved mother, who lived to tell her story. I am a mom to Five children, one of whom lives with my Father. I have an advanced degree in grief survival, a master's in living for the moment. I have learned a new language of compassion, the art of listening to what is felt, not what is said. Of looking past the facade and seeing the heart. I have something stored up in Heaven, a little deposit on eternity.
I have learned to love with abandon. I have learned to live without regret.
Happy Birthday Ian - you are forever loved. ~*~*~*~
Very powerful post. So sorry about your loss...5 years is a milestone that I know I will have a hard time with. We are just hitting the 1 year mark without him next week and then school starts, so school starting will probably always ache. :( Thinking of you!
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