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!