It Once Was Lost, But Now It's Found

I was thrown for quite a loop ... brought back to 2007 with a single sentence.  Pure joy and a giant smile fell over my face when I heard that something had been found.

We received a lot of things back then.  Flowers, cards, small tokens.  There was one gift that came to our door that we have treasured.  It was a garden stone, engraved with a saying and a small plaque with Sofia and Vincent's name and their "remembery" date.  It was placed gently, walked by daily and for a family who has yet to bury the ashes of their children, used as a special place to visit and put flowers or tokens from their sisters.

When we moved over two years ago, somehow the plaque did not make it with the stone.  When I saw it in our new garden, I welled up seeing an empty rectangle with some remnants of where their names once lived.  It's the little things that hurt.  When I was filmed for Daily Bloom's "Milm" video, the camera pans out to a shot of the stone, missing their names.  I'm sure I'm the only one who noticed besides my husband and I didn't even know they had filmed it, but no matter what that piece contained... I fixated on it.


So this weekend, our dear friends from our old neighborhood told us that last week, the new owners of our last home had come across the plaque in the yard and had dropped it off with them.  I'm not sure if it was hard or joyful for our friends to tell us about it, but I felt a wave of happiness hearing it.  My girlfriend said that she was looking at it all week and it was making her feel sad.  It's now back in it's rightful place, next to the rock people that the kids' created to represent how we look and I feel like I'm back too.  We are very grateful.

People always say how strong we are as a family and as individuals.  Sure, we have been asked to do some extraordinary things and each of our family members carries their own cross for it.  Then something as little as the memory stone makes me realize that we're easily knocked over. There is also the big "something" that we have yet to bury our children's ashes or spread them somewhere that tells me that I'm not strong enough to let them out of my home. I guess I still have too much on my plate, but whatever it is... the good thing is I'm trying NOT to be knocked over.  I guess we just do the things we need to do to protect ourselves and We Stand and we stand strong... so maybe that's just what everyone else sees.

Thank you for an act of kindness.