I've had a lot to say lately!

And most of it is just silly silly. I don't think this is silly silly, but I think it is paranoiac.



I am not afraid to die. I do not fear death, and I do not fear dying. I know where I'm headed. I know who has gone there before me, and I know who is there waiting for me. I know that Jesus loves me and that he is the reason I get to go be with the people I love.


But every day I have to pray that I can lose this fearful feeling over my shoulder that someone I love would die. I used to be terrified that my parents would die and I would still NEED them (emotionally)...that doesn't scare me so badly anymore (don't get me wrong - I'd be devastated!, but it just doesn't wig me out anymore like it did). I don't sleep well, because I worry that if I sleep, I'll miss some key thing, some clue, and I'll wake up to someone being gone (specifically, Tanner and Ryan). Because....it's happened before. There's no reason it couldn't happen again. And SIDS babies tend to have siblings that are SIDS babies. Now....Ariana is not TECHNICALLY a SIDS baby, but there was no definitive diagnosis as to her death (and that is a whole entire factory full of barrels of fish that I won't even get into here), so we have NO answers. The only thing I know is that we laid down for our Tuesday nap just like we always do, I woke up, and really, honestly, she was gone. I'd like to think she made it and fought all the way to the hospital, but reading all the reports, she was gone at some point right before, during, or right after the EMTs arrived.

And it's not that I'm all crazy psycho and I don't let the boys rest or anything. I am just absolutely terrified about it. I guess I never knew what death looked like. I'd never seen someone before the funeral staff had worked on them before. And, if you love somebody, you don't want to see them dead (duh), but if you have kids...it's a brand new ballgame with all different rules that don't make any sense if you discover one has died. And that's an image that I can't get out of my head. It went away for a while, but it's back again, and it makes me want to smash my head into the wall just to get it out of there...except I can't.


SO. ANYWAY. Long story short, it creeps me out a little bit when people sleep now. If I can't hear them breathing or moving or see their chests going up and down, I often have to fight down panic. Thank goodness both my boys snore. (So do Ari and I :-p) It's just one of those things.


So. Sorry to lay that all out there, but I wanted to get that off my chest. That being said I stand by what I said earlier - I am making a conscious effort to be a better person. That means not falling into the trap of becoming afraid of my own shadow. I see how people get involved in all sorts of destructive behaviors when they experience significant losses. If we didn't have Tanner I'd either never get out of bed or perhaps be drunk all the time. Maybe both? I don't know, thinking about drinking to drunkenness makes me feel kind of sick to my stomach anymore.

Just something to think about. All the things we should never ever ever ever have to think about but somehow in this stupid stupid world we have to. I keep reminding myself that to Ari, the world was all exciting and shiny every single day, and that's how I want to look at it, too.