With one day left in the race, Pitter Patter is in the lead by $3. Want to make like Jalapeño Hannah and throw your purse at that? Please do.
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I didn't consider the mortality of parents until 5th grade. It was 5th grade when a classmate suddenly lost his mom to Toxic Shock Syndrome. Everything about the situation was terrible, but what stuck for me was that in that instant, it became possible for anyone to lose a parent.
As she inches her way to the start of her 5th grade year, Alexis has already faced that reality twice. It has been about a year since a friend from one of her activities lost a parent to an unexpected stroke. Recently, another friend lost a parent. Both times it was the sort of thing where Alexis herself had seen the parent the day before they were gone, so she fully understood the unexpectedness of it all.
"She was fine yesterday," Alexis said in one of the cases.
There are a lot of conversations that have come from the situations. Good conversations, even if they were hard. But what has stuck for me is what was left after the fact. In both instances, I knew the names, but couldn't place the faces. In both instances, I made an effort to watch the obituaries for a photo so that I could connect things. In both instances, there wasn't one.
There were wonderful words about wonderful people, but no photographs.
So I did the very 2016 thing and looked around online. I was connected with one of the wonderful people via Facebook, so I dug through her account. Every post was a love story to her children, which really is a fantastic thing to leave behind. There was photo after photo of happy kids on days before their worlds shattered.
There wasn't a single photo of the mom. There wasn't one of her with her kids, one of her alone, nothing. I later learned that it was purposeful -- the woman had gained some weight in the days since she became a mom so she purposely avoided photos. There were a couple of family photos with her in them, but no silly selfies or crazy beach vacation photos or even something from a recent Disney vacation.
A very similar situation had occurred with the other wonderful person., except that time there weren't even family photos.
Two people weren't happy with their appearance, so they didn't allow it to be captured forever. And now they're gone.
Let's all go take silly selfies with our kids today, okay?
