But I'm not finished yet...

I personally believe that all well-adjusted adults have some form of personal therapy and/or escape that helps them get through tough times - it could be writing (that's it for me), talking on the phone, consuming chocolate (another method for me), reading (yep that's me too), taking a trip and getting "away from it all" or who knows what else - I know I have more than one coping method and sometimes it takes all of them to get through a situation. A few weeks ago I finished the story of John's accident. (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) Yesterday, I was working on clearing out/organizing some of the paper clutter that is my nemesis when I came across this - it is something I wrote around the one year anniversary of John's death. I re-read it, re-appreciated life and thought - Oh Good! A Blog Post! so here you go.

"I don't want to stop now, I'm building something..."

As I sat in the funeral of a close friends 14-year-old son those words came back to me. John, the boy laying in the casket had said them to me just over a year ago. We had needed some help cleaning-up the hundreds of bricks we had taken out of our yard in the process of removing the over-grown and uncared-for landscaping around our house and John was 13 and needed some cash.

The older couple our house had been built for 25 years earlier had loved landscaping and gardening - their yard reflected their enjoyment. Brick walkways, terraces supported by neatly stacked railroad ties, bamboo in a neat box on the side of the yard providing shade, a vine climbing up a trellis at the back, flowers and herbs filled the yard. Standing in the middle of the waist-high growth in the backyard when we bought the house it was hard to imagine that the yard had ever been beautiful, but as we cleaned it up and cleaned it out it was easy to imagine the haven that the shady yard had once been. Now it was just a mess. We hauled off the railroad ties, wheeled the bricks around to the back of the shed, leveled the yard out and laid sod, it was starting to be usable. John's dad knew what we were working on so when he needed a few dollars he called to see if we had anything John could do. I had been stacking brick and was more than happy to turn the work over to someone else.

John came over around mid-morning and worked hard all day long. He only took a couple short breaks to drink some lemonade and eat a quick sandwich and then he was back at it. It started to get late so we told him he could stop and we'd take him home but he wasn't ready. A half-hour later it was almost dark so we told him he could quit again but he just said "I don't want to stop now, I'm building something." Another 20 minutes and it was too dark to work anymore so we gave him his cash and took him home. The bricks were stacked 5 feet high on a pallet and there were just a couple dozen still on the ground so in the daylight later I finished the job.

Now, sitting in the funeral listening to his pastor talk about fishing with John, his youth leader talk about how much John had loved God and loved people and crying with his family because he wouldn't be building anything ever again I wondered if he had been ready to die. Had he told God, "not yet Lord, I'm building something"? We knew about a lot of his dreams, his goals, his ambitions. He loved life, he loved his family, he had friends - he was loved, cared about and missed. I wondered what he had been building the day he died, what kind of memories he was hoping to make, what kind of relationships he was hoping to strengthen, when he knew that his time was over and he wouldn't be building anything ever again. Then I stopped and thought "what am I building?"

I have hopes, I have dreams, I have friends, I have a family - what am I building? Am I building good memories of happiness, love and joy or, am I building memories of a woman always frustrated because her house isn't perfect? Am I building memories of a wife and daughter that had time for her husband and her family or am I building memories of a selfish woman who just wanted to be able to do what she wanted to do? What am I building? When it is my time to die I don't want to be full of regrets about kind words left unsaid, love left unexpressed and time spent wasted. If asked, I'll probably say "but I'm not finished yet..." But there won't be anything left that I can build because my time will be gone so for today, I'm just going to build the best I can and let God take care of the rest.

I'm Blessed - have a great day and take some time this summer to build some happy memories with those you love. I know I'm going to!