Day 136 of 365 Days of being Thankful

               Today I am thankful for the gift of friendship with other bereaved parents.  Last night Priscilla and I ran the bereaved parent meeting because Carol and her husband were away.  There was a really bad thunderstorm so only a total of five people attended.  Priscilla, me, Kathy and Al, and our new friend Ann(we met her at a yard sale two weeks ago and invited her to come).  It is so easy to talk about our deceased children and our grief journeys with each other. Other people get tired of our grief.  I had a meeting planned but since there were only 5 of us, we just chatted. But, since we are all friends, we also talk about other things!  Al was telling us about how he met Kathy forty years ago.  She was a secretary where he worked.  He kept asking her out and she kept saying no.  She was a divorced single mom with 4 children, and her mom lived with her.  Al was a divorced single dad with custody of his two sons.  He kept asking, she kept saying no.  Finally she said yes! They were married eight months later!  I asked Al if he knew Kathy's mother lived with her. He knew so I said to Kathy,"you must have been really good in bed for him to marry you with 4 kids and your mother!" They got married and had two more children.  They lost their adult son Daniel to drugs two years ago. There is no good way to lose a child, but a sudden loss is totally devastating.  If someone's child is sick, there is always hope but also they begin to mentally prepare for the death as their child gets sicker.  We also talked about how others see the death of our child as a tragic incident.  Most do not realize that it is not just an incident to the family, it is a lifelong tragedy for us to miss our child.  It is not something we ever get over. Al told us that whenever he was around a person who lost a child, he usually tried to stay away from them because he didn't know what to say. Now he is that person who lost a child.
        So many bereaved parents believe in signs.  They think coins, feathers, trinkets, butterflies, and dragonflies are signs from their kids. I think coins are just a coin someone dropped, a feather just fell from a bird, and butterflies just exist for everyone.  The same thing with dragonflies, they are just part of nature. Many also fell that electrical outages are signs from their kids, I just think they are electrical outages or system failures. I would like to see a really good psychic that tells me something that only Amy and I would know.  If Amy is around me in spirit, she knows the things I'd like to hear!