This post is not about politics.
But it is about Election Day.
This was quite a week. We voted. Candidates won. Candidates lost. We said goodbye to political ads for another year or so. It was a lot to take in.
With all the events of the week, my thoughts continued to return to Charlotte. I thought about how she always went with us to the polls. Four years ago, she braved the lines and the rain to vote TWICE; once with me and once with her dad. On election night, Charlotte had long since gone to sleep but Roger and I stayed up till after midnight, watching history unfold. In the morning, we told her that Barack Obama was our new President. She could recognize his face in magazines and on television and would say, "That's Barack Obama. He's our new president."
Who could have guessed that barely two months from that date, as the President took the oath of office, we faced a whole new world that we never expected? Who could have imagined that barely a year after that fateful discovery, we would say goodbye to our daughter forever?
That was four years ago. That was a lifetime ago.
I thought so much this week about everything that has happened in four years. Roger and I lost our daughter but we also changed career paths, launched a foundation that has helped hundreds of families, and (oh, yeah) I wrote a book.
I have stumbled through grief, learning about the process of loss, sometimes helping others along the way. I have met families whose lives have also been impacted by pediatric cancer, a world that had been so foreign to me on Election Day 2008.
Many times in the last year we have heard the phrase, "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" On an emotional level, I have no idea how to answer that question. Sometimes I think that I lived a lifetime before January 20, 2009 and I have lived another lifetime in the four years since. In so many ways, I continue to be crushed beyond imagination; and yet, I have found a sense of healing and peace in the three years since Charlotte's terminal diagnosis and death. I can only imagine what four more years will mean for me.
But it is about Election Day.
This was quite a week. We voted. Candidates won. Candidates lost. We said goodbye to political ads for another year or so. It was a lot to take in.
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| Charlotte: Election Day 2008 |
Who could have guessed that barely two months from that date, as the President took the oath of office, we faced a whole new world that we never expected? Who could have imagined that barely a year after that fateful discovery, we would say goodbye to our daughter forever?
That was four years ago. That was a lifetime ago.
I thought so much this week about everything that has happened in four years. Roger and I lost our daughter but we also changed career paths, launched a foundation that has helped hundreds of families, and (oh, yeah) I wrote a book.
I have stumbled through grief, learning about the process of loss, sometimes helping others along the way. I have met families whose lives have also been impacted by pediatric cancer, a world that had been so foreign to me on Election Day 2008.
Many times in the last year we have heard the phrase, "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" On an emotional level, I have no idea how to answer that question. Sometimes I think that I lived a lifetime before January 20, 2009 and I have lived another lifetime in the four years since. In so many ways, I continue to be crushed beyond imagination; and yet, I have found a sense of healing and peace in the three years since Charlotte's terminal diagnosis and death. I can only imagine what four more years will mean for me.