Oh no I di-int!

Do you remember your parents saying things to you that would absolutely make your skin crawl? You probably swore that you would never say them when you got older. People probably always told you that you too would one day say the same things to your kids, and you would roll your eyes and think "Great! Another old person who thinks I'm going to be just like my parents!" You stood your ground, you would never say anything so stupid. Parents are old, things today weren't like they were back when your parents were little, right? I mean, the old people who lived my house still had a record player when cassette tapes were the rage. You could hear your parents snicker and catch them winking at each other as you argued you would never say stupid things like they did.

One thing I really hated to hear my Dad say was "You're going to school, not the prom, hurry up and get out of here before you are late". UGH! I'm having flashbacks of that as I type it out. I can hear his voice so clearly in my head. I haven't heard that voice in 15 years and it would be nice...if it was any other saying of his except for that one. I remember slamming my stuff around the minute he would yell that up the steps to me. It made me so mad!

Hailee, our almost 14 year old, was running a little late for school. She likes to get there right at 7 so she can hang out with her friends before the bell at 7:30. She leaves the house at 5 til 7 so she can be there. It was 7:00 on the button and she was still getting ready in her room. Before I had time to even think about what was coming out of my mouth, the words just flew out. "Let's go, Hailee, you're going to school, not the prom!!!!!!!!!!!" I felt the air suck back into my body with force, I felt my eyes squint shut and could feel the muscles in my face tense up right as I said it. Yep, I said it, I actually said it.

I was tempted to rinse my mouth out with soap for that one.

On that note, I'll leave you with my prom picture. Don't laugh at my huge hair...but you can tell how long it would take to get ready, I mean, teasing the hair that high would take at least an hour alone, add in make up and mirror gawking and we're talking almost 2 hours.

Ahhh, young love. This would be Mr. Crafty and I from May 1992. My senior prom.

If there is admission into Heaven...

So, today was the funeral for a friend of mine. A very young friend. Her name was Ashley. She was just 41, the mother of 2 small kids, ages 9 and 5. Kids who were much to young to be without their mother, that's for sure. Ashley was diagnosed in 2009 with Stage IV Inflammatory Breast Cancer.

Every phone call she made started with "Hello beautiful", and if I was having a bad day when she called, that ALWAYS cheered me up. How could it not? If she received bad news from scans and she would call, she still started that call with "Hello beautiful". Truth be told, she was the beautiful one. Inside and out. With the church being standing room only, you can only imagine the impact she had on everyone's lives. There will certainly be a void in our world, but I know that she wouldn't want us to be crying over her. She always told me she admired my sense of humor, so I decided that I wouldn't be too emotional today. I would try to find the positive. It won't be easy when deep down I'm so sad.

As I walked into the visitation, a kind of calm/peace came over me, and I kind of cracked a smile. It was probably the first in a few days for me. I was even able to joke with a good friend that I was shocked the church was still standing after she walked in. If there was one person to get Kristy into a church, it would have been Ashley...that right there is proof enough of the awesome woman she was.

I met Ashley through coupons. Yes, you read that right. LOL! There is actually a group of us who became good friends that way. I met her just a few months before her diagnosis. I'll still never forget when we found out. We met at another friend's house and not wanting to bring attention to her diagnosis, we all wore pink shirts. If you know me, you know how much I hate pink. It's one of my favorite shirts now though...simply because of what it represents. And not that it represents breast cancer, but that it represents us girls coming together for Ashley. That night was crazy, I remember the lost look in her eyes, the numbness in her soul. Yet, sitting next to her on the couch, she grabbed my leg, and said "what's up, beautiful?". That's just how she was.

She was a fighter, that is for sure. She promised to never give up the fight, and she sure didn't. No one expected it to end this way, we thought she was going to be the one miracle patient who beat the odds of Stage IV Inflammatory Breast Cancer. We didn't think it, we expected it, we were sure because of the fight she had in her. She was determined. This wasn't going to beat her.

Unfortunately on August 17th, she lost that battle. And, it doesn't feel right saying she "lost the battle". She gave it everything she had and more. She didn't give up, not even for a second. So, I don't know how to word what happened here. All I know is because of this disease, 2 young kids are without their mother, a Mother and Father had to bury their daughter, people were left behind.

We never did get to work on the scrapbook she wanted desperately to put together with me. I think of that almost every night now. I'd still love to do it, her kids deserve it. She had a story to write, we were just never going to give it an ending. Those were her exact words to me on the phone one day. "I want to write my story, but there will never be an ending because I'm not going anywhere."

But, that's all getting mushy again, and I won't do it today. I'll leave you with this. If there is admission into Heaven, you better believe Ashley has a coupon!!!

Good bye, beautiful, you will be missed by many!