weak with sorrow…

PS 31:9 Be merciful to me, O LORD, for I am in distress;
   my eyes grow weak with sorrow,
   my soul and my body with grief.

My DD and I went to a funeral yesterday.

This one was a hard one y’all. I have been to a few funerals in my day and this one rates right up there at the top of my list of life's most painful and difficult moments.

My heart hurts and my soul is in distress as the psalmist describes. My eyes are weak and feel like sandpaper, worn out from my tears.

His name was Aubrey, but I always called him Aubrey Thomas. He just struck me as a person that needed to be called by both his first and middle name. My daughter and he were not quite two years apart in age. From the time they could walk they were inseparable companions. We lived side by side, next door neighbors until we moved away in 2006.

If I could not find my girl child I first looked at Aubrey’s house and vice versa. My house was just as much his home as his own at times. When they were very little the “knock before you come in rule” just did not mean anything. I’d be in my kitchen and in Aubrey would walk in inquiring sweetly if my daughter could come out and play.

How many Peanut Butter & Jelly sandwiched did I make for the two of them. How many bottles of bubbles got spilled in the sand box, how many boxes of sidewalk chalk, popsicles and juice boxes were passed to the both of them. How many times did I put Aubrey and my daughter in respective time outs until they could agree that they really did love each other and could act that way. How many time did I sit side by side with Aubrey on my front porch just talking about his day. How many times did I watch from my kitchen window as my daughter and he ran around in my back yard or rode their bikes down in the cul-de-sac or chased after fireflies on a summer evening. They had birthday parties, went trick or treating, swimming, roller skating and all the other childhood rights of passage.

 

 

This is just too hard.

Regret floods over me as I look at the past five years since we moved away and had little contact with him. The reality of the awful truth is that there are things that happen that make no sense what so ever.

What makes a 13 year old child take his own like. I can not even comprehend how a mother would feel faced with this devastating reality. But the reality is I feel as if I have lost one of my own children. My heart is grieving and I am filled with sadness and pain.

I don't want to go on and on, but I did want to share with all of you this sad news and ask you to pray for Aubrey's family and for me and my daughter. I don’t understand why this has happen and I know that my daughter understands it even less than I do.

So no Random Dozen for me today, no Thankful Thursday or Flashback Friday, I will be back but I just need to step away and grieve for this precious child who is no longer in our lives.

Blessings

Robin