Some memories make me smile, others, not so much
YUCK …. I HATE this memory that popped up today…
I HATE when I see this series of pictures … But it is necessary to look at them because here, even almost 10 years down the road, I am still processing this loss… And always will for the rest of my life…
I came across this old post I did back in 2009 with these pictures called “Jamie’s life lesson # (some random number)” and seeing it always makes me weep…I had been working in my home office and Jamie was playing basketball out in the driveway. My desk overlooked the street at the time and I saw Jamie dart out into the street after a basketball, without looking. I immediately went outside and scolded him for not stopping and looking before crossing and then made him cross the street around 20 times, practicing stopping and looking both ways , over and over again, each time (he was not happy but I made him do it anyway)…
Of course, considering Jamie’s fate, this gave me the chills and made me very sad. I do not believe Jamie’s accident was his fault. He knew how to cross a street. He was a very cautious boy… as a matter of fact, he hesitated because the driver who hit him had his blinker on and Jamie must have thought he was turning into the hotel that is all we can assume bc we do not know what happened … he was being careful.on his very first vacation without us…
I will never forgive myself for allowing him to go on that trip … 40 years prior to that… my brother, Kevin, knew how to swim. My parent’s made us both take swimming lessons every single summer at Ramapo Pool, yet he drowned in a pool at a campground in The Delaware Water Gap on vacation (we think he may have hit his head on the slide of the pool- and the ironic part of that story is that the campground owner had just installed the in-ground pool in the fall before Kevin drowned because there had been so many drownings in The Delaware River… and there was a lifeguard on duty)…anyway, I guess MY life lesson is that, regardless of how well you prepare your kids for life, you can’t keep them in a plastic bubble… you have to let them live it and take that very small, please-don’t-let-it-happen-to-my-kid. chance (small, unless your last name happens to be Farrelly or McHenry… or Kennedy) that chains of events and different variables of fate that are written in the stars can come together to cause horrible, inexplicable shit to happen (and, please… don’t comment that it was “God’s Plan” unless you really want to piss me off)…
In the meantime. I guess I am the posterchild that shit can happen which is why I am determined to live life to the fullest for Kevin, for Jamie for Emily and for myself while I can