The reservoir walk will always bring back memories of our journey with Shannon. I sometimes feel we had to walk that circle in order to think during those days. Covering that ground, well, at least it felt like something. During those nine months, the weather cooperated and we could walk that path almost ever day. It became the best ritual. I think I need to find that again.
Friday was a day filled with emotions - Erin's birthday coincides with "National Sibling Day". While this is one of those pseudo-holidays made up by who knows who, it still involves people posting pictures of them and their siblings. Damn.
Friday is also the anniversary of another death in our family. The day Henry, Erin's cousin's son, succumbed to meningitis. Too young to be gone.
And finally, Lauren Hill died on Friday. She was the basketball player who suffered from the same type of tumor as Shannon. She gained notoriety for playing college basketball until the very end. Lauren helped raise awareness for the need for funding of pediatric cancer research and she helped forward the cause by raising $1.5 million before she passed. And yet, she passed just the same...
I think about her parents now. Those days just after. The memorials, the outreach, the love. It's powerful. But it's a long journey and there are so many days ahead of them. Days without Lauren.
It's one of those week with a date looming on the calendar. April 15th - for us, it's not tax day, it's diagnosis day. The day the music changed, the day we had to quit dreaming about the future and try to stay in the present. April 15th is the day that a walk around the reservoir became so important for us. A place to sort out our thoughts, a place to move forward, step by step, as if we could walk our way out of it. A place to go and breathe and feel...
So, today is off to a good start. The sun on my skin and Shannon in my heart. Onward...
