Jack and...Jewelry?

Thank you for all of the kind words and encouragement after yesterday's post. I am dealing with just plain old missing Jack, as well as being patient with God right now.

Breaking News:

Not only has Jack's life and death touched so many hearts, he is also making a tangible difference for suffering people around the world through his favorite charity, Samaritan's Purse. Thank you for all you have done to help with this by running races in his honor with Jack's Lanterns, packing shoe boxes through Operation Christmas Child, and making monetary donations. Thaknk you. Thank you.

My dear friend and fellow blogger, Jill, has generously come up with another great way to raise money in Jack's name for Samaritan's Purse... through an online Stella and Dot Jewelry party!

What will this look like?

Well, we will force ourselves to look through the gorgeous baubles and bling and see if any (ha!) pieces call our name. Items will be shipped directly to buyers' homes.

A SIGNIFICANT (like, VERY significant) portion of every sale will go to Samaritan's Purse in Jack's name, most likely earmarked for Emergency Relief. Our local congressman (and friend) recently visited refugee camps in Sudan where Samaritan's Purse was at work feeding and caring for needy and hurting people and shared his report with us. The needs! Oh the needs!. You can read more about this humanitarian work here.

Soooooo, please do not feel as if you have to buy something. No pressure! But if, like me, you might like a few pieces of lovely jewelry and you love the idea of not only helping others but thinking of Jack while you do so, please check out the invitation and start browsing.

A few of my faves:

Thanks and Love!

Some Christmas Thoughts, With Gobs of Photos from Last Christmas

I’m guessing you may be worried. It has been more than a week and you haven’t really heard from me. I know I’d be worried about you if the tables were turned. The truth is, I just don’t know where to start in describing Christmas. And now it’s New Year’s, and the symbolism of leaving Jack in one year, yet moving on to the next weighs heavy on us, even as we stayed up to watch the ball drop and hang out with friends. While I’m just not sure what to write, there is a great deal to share, of that I am certain.

First and foremost, I want you to know we made it through Christmas! I hope you are proud of us; I know I sure am. There was a lot of laughter in our home. Rituals and traditions including “It’s a Wonderful Life” and Christmas Eve church. We made it fun for Margaret. Our niece flew in to keep her company, and the house sounded like it used to, with running up and down the stairs, the Wii turned on for the first time since August, and rooms being used again.

In the days leading up to Christmas we felt surrounded by love: through this blog, Facebook, and throughout our town. People stopped by in person and checked in virtually to let us know we were not alone. People sent letters and packages. I must say I am learning so much from you about how to reach out to others in difficult times and how to acknowledge pain.

In trying to train Jack and Margaret, but especially Tim, I have always said, “People just need to be acknowledged.” Never in a cheap, “I’m sorry you feel that way” kind of way, but in an “I’m sorry. This sucks. What you are dealing with is very hard” kind of way. I’ve been working on this with Tim for almost 20 years. He comes from the “If I mention a problem it will draw attention to it, but if I ignore it, perhaps it will go away” school of wishful thinking. Over the years he has learned that a little acknowledgment goes a long way.

With our current situation, we have been blessed to be able to experience your acknowledgment of our loss, and even the world’s loss, in relationship to Jack’s death. This does not take away the sting, the anger, or the disappointment we feel at our son being gone, but it helps. It makes us feel connected to others rather than separated from them. Even as I feel like a broken, alien species, out of sync with the person I was a few short months ago, I have never felt more connected to the world’s suffering and to the world than I do today.

A Christmas tree lovingly placed by unseen hands beside the bridge/drainage ditch where they found my little boy says, “Something happened here. Something changed for a family, and for a town.” That is an acknowledgement, a connection from person to person, family to family. As lights, ornaments and even presents appeared at that tree, day after day, the message we got was, “Jack is not forgotten. Jack counts.”

Seeing blue ribbons pop up around town and in the blogworld says, “This Christmas is different from last year.”

An evening drinking wine, way too much wine, with neighborhood friends and sharing stories of that horrible day, trying to make sense of what happened and talking about how God has been at work through this situation says, “This is not small. We need to talk. Jack’s life and death are not small matters.”

Spending time with my sister, someone who knew Jack better than almost anyone else, and who was able to sum up so much about his character, even in the brutal, crazed days immediately following the accident, was a needed time of acknowledgment for both of us.

Time with Auntie was well spent—ranging from being upbeat when the kids were around, to finding quiet moments together when we could just look at each other and say, “What the hell is going on here?” except we said a word other than hell. We were able to acknowledge that if there could ever be a poster child for “Kid least likely to get swept away by a frickin’ neighborhood creek” that boy would be Jack. Acknowledgment of the sheer lunacy of this situation.

We veered from pigging out on chocolate and discussing the year-end double issue of People Magazine to weeping for what her son lost, in losing his best friend Jack. We shared that while Jack will never be faced with heartbreak or drugs or depression, and how we can see God drawing people closer as a result of Jack’s death, we would trade it all in a second if we could.

We were able to acknowledge our regret of not spending enough time together in the past while also acknowledging that spending time together now is ridiculously hard for all of us.

In all, Christmas was okay. It was survivable. We made it. We felt your love and fervent prayers the entire time. Thank you for walking beside us.

Some things, however, remained unspoken, unacknowledged. Like the way my sister was able to loan me her son for a few minutes, his head in my lap as we snuggled on the couch. These moments meant I could pray for him as he tries to figure out how to go on without his cousin. But I could also close my eyes and pretend, just for a few seconds, that the boy I held, and probably squeezed a little too tightly, was my boy, not hers.

Margaret's Excellent Adventure

I bet you would love to hear about Margaret’s Excellent Adventure, made possible by… YOU!

The fruit of your tweeting, Facebooking, emails, blogging, calling, begging, and of course praying really started bubbling up a few days ago. Friends of friends (and a sorority sister!) who work for People Magazine in NY woke up before dawn on Halloween, dressed as Princesses Eugenie and Beatrice to try to win tickets for Margaret. Oh yes they did. Hats and all! They got plucked out of the audience and got to go back stage to plead Margaret’s case to anyone who would listen. Incredible!

Others reached out to a friend, an amazing woman and exec at NBC, who generously gave Margaret 2 VIP tickets for the Nov 23 Bieber Today show concert!

We even had phone messages from our local news station wanting to know what was up with all of those tweets! Your campaign certainly got noticed.

So while I was processing this exciting info, and LOVING how you were loving on my little girl, I got another call. The best friend of the sister of a woman who lived in our town until a year ago (are you following?) and who grew up a few streets away from our house, spent the weekend arranging THIS:

Tickets for the 3 of us to attend the American Music Awards in LA where Justin Bieber will be performing! Oh yes. Airfare and hotel, too! And if possible, a meet and greet —all courtesy of Coca-Cola, who puts on the show. Wow.

So I went from “Will I shower before work today?” to having the words: “Today Show, People Magazine, Dick Clark, AMA’s and Justin Bieber” spinning in my head. Oh my.

I decided it was time to clue Margaret in on all of this, for I do not believe that a complete surprise is the right approach given the shock she has endured losing Jack so suddenly.

She, of course, was THRILLED THRILLED THRILLED, and when I told her the two awesome opportunities-- the Today Show and the AMA's-- she said, “Can I do both?” Yeah, it took her about a millisecond to get used the idea of traveling the country and seeing Justin, her main man, perform not once but twice! However, we made her choose and she chose the AMA’s because she’s never been to CA before. In fact, she hasn’t been on a plane since she was 3 years old.

YOU did this.

Your phone calls, your tweets, your prayers, your willingness to reach out on Facebook and through your blogs to a family you may only have heard about in the “virtual” world…every little bit made a difference. Whether or not your phone call or email was the one that secured these awesome opportunities, you extended yourself to try to bring some excitement, some distraction, and some pleasure at a time of deep mourning.

And you know what? Margaret was not surprised. Sure, she was VERY surprised that her heartfelt shopping list would lead to her getting to hear JB perform. But when I told her everything YOU had done to make it happen, she was happy, but not surprised. Living in a world where people care about and help each other did not surprise her one bit, and for that I am even more grateful. YOU did that.

It was a generous outpouring of love from people who, to a large extent, have probably felt pretty helpless in regards to our little family, especially since no one can give us what we truly want and need-- Jack back here with us. I will never be able to know every detail of what each person has done for us or be able to thank you adequately, but please know what you have done has touched us deeply.

When I’m going through hell, and unfortunately that it what it feels like most days, I’m so glad you are on my side.

...

So in a few weeks, look for us on the red carpet! I’ll be the dazed one with gray roots on my head and gratefulness in my heart for people I may or may not ever meet. Margaret will be the one flashing her tin grin, with purple braces for JB, of course.

Thank you.

At Which Point I Stopped Weeping

Hi Peeps!

I want to let you know that my 3-week crying jag has ended and I'm feeling much better now. As for Molly's school situation, she is rocking the new school and has not even balked about the uniform. Adorable plaid skort? Check. Khaki shorts she would not have deigned to wear previously? Check.

She even sported a plain navy polo tucked into (!) khaki shorts today and panda bear earrings. Rather than writhe on the floor complaining about this drab outfit as any self-respecting 4th grade fashionista would do, she walked downstairs and said pleasantly, "Mom, do you think I look a little bit like a zookeeper today?"

I want to thank you for your prayers and your encouragement. I felt supported by you and still do. My husband and I are still having reservations about whether we made the right choice for her, so a flip-flop might be in order. Really. We're that psycho. But you know what? I'm pretty confident none of this will kill her. That is a vast improvement from the way I felt a week ago.

And a word of advice for those unable to sleep because you are worrying about your children:

Please do not try to solve your insomnia by watching the following on TV:

Dateline's hidden camera special about teens getting in cars with drunk friends.

World's Youngest Schizophrenic

The Kids with Incurable Diseases Special

Hoaders

Too Fat and 15

Trust me on this. Try a glass of wine instead.

Dear Neglected Readers:

I've been writing a lot this week, but posting? Not so much. Unless you count posting at 1 a.m. and then taking it down 5 minutes later. You see I live in fear of hurting people, or more truthfully, doing stuff that will come back later and bite me in the butt. Therefore, I second-guess a lot of posts. This leaves me drained and An Inch of Gray a little light on the posts. Never fear, I've asked Tom to attempt to cover my gray for me today with my beloved Nice'n Easy Root Touch Up, so I'm hoping for fresh tidbits to share with you tomorrow.

With Love,

Anna