Today the wife and mother from the house across the street was killed in a car accident.
Empathy is what makes us human. We feel other's pain and identify. I watched the little girls across the street playing in the front yard, because they had not been told about their mother. I wanted to freeze time for them.
I am beyond fortunate to have nearly all of my close family still alive. I lost my grandfather to cancer when I was ten. He wasn't just a grandfather, I'm pretty sure he taught Jesus to walk on water. He laid on his back in the grass at night and showed me the stars, we fed the fish in our pond together every day, he snuck candy for me, he played, he laughed and he loved all of his grandchildren beyond the bounds of the human heart. He was sick for a couple of years. The details and sequence of surgeries and treatment is foggy to me. What is not foggy is the morning my Dad woke me up to tell me my Pawpaw was gone. My world shattered. The sound went out of the room and I thought the sun would never shine again.
That memory is the source of my empathy for those little girls. It's also the reason I sat in my kitchen today with Tate in my lap and cried on the back of her shirt while she strung beads into a necklace. I can feel the grief of the family I barely know rippling over the waters.
I sit here tonight listening to Sweetness softly snoring on the couch. I know my children are fast asleep because I have checked on them several times already. I will hold all of my little family tonight. I will praise God for the people he put in my life and I will ask for peace for the family who lost their wife and mother today.
I feel for the family across your street. Frank Taylor, the man thru the woods, lost his daughter this week. She was 50, he lost his wife this summer. Turner and Tate and I take greens to him. Halle and I were making a delivery today. He said he wants me to pray for him. I will also pray for the family across the street.
ReplyDeleteBerkley's little friend lost her mother a couple of months ago. A lady I spoje to often at football games and school gatherings. She too lived across the street from me. I think of her poor children often. How the dad is grieving and hoping that he can still manage to help his children. Life can end so soon. I cry everytime I think of how something like that will effect my children and I too hold them and try to give them great memories to last them forever.
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