Then today rolls by.
Mom's heart is so broken at the loss of her little Jack Russell, Pete. Fourteen years is a long time.
She'd never heard the Rainbow Bridge poem. She has now. It's SO true of my sweet mother. As my friend of so long said to me not too long ago, "I don't think your mom has ever met an animal she didn't love and vice versa." Amen to that.
And, one day there will be a plethora of activity on that Rainbow Bridge as my mom crosses over and all the animals she's loved and nurtured in a lifetime will certainly be there all a joy to see her sweet smile. As will be many people who've been blessed by her love and have left here before any of us.
Not much of a way to begin your birthday in the middle of your eighth decade of life and love.
Nothing crushes my heart and soul worse than seeing and hearing and feeling my mother's cry and heartache.
But, she's the most amazing woman I've lived to tell about, that's for sure.
I LOVE YOU, MOM.
It is the early morning hours of 14 July 2014.
For many years I have carried a very heavy burden in my heart.
I've loved a man and I loved his child like my own. The LOVE is NOT the burden, the loss is the burden.
Circumstances well beyond my control made a huge mess of what was once a lot of love and laughter. I've NOTHING TO hide, but no one really wants to hear the blunt truths. Fact of the matter is, it won't bring back my Steve. But, it will expose those who lied egregiously and helped to perpetrate more lies and confusion. All I want is the truth to be known and for the rumors about my Steve's death to STOP. HE deserves that, his son deserves that, his grandson deserves that.
We used to listen to that little boy, he would keep us up into the night with Tonka trucks and matchbox cars, and we'd lay in the bed and laugh at the day that he would have a child of his own and how we would get to laugh when he got so little sleep.
As time would have it, neither of us would be there in person when that day would come. It dropped me to my knees in tears in my home thousands of miles away when the day did arrive.
I don't know if damage that has been done, that I am truly unaware of, can ever be undone. I do know that I still love that little boy who is now a grown man with all of my heart and soul. His child, my grandson, I also love with a depth that I cannot explain.
Most people who don't really know me can't understand that and would not even try. I know one thing to be true and that is that my Steve would have so loved to be right in the middle our grandson growing up and meeting our fantastic and amazing daughter in love.
God will guide us. That's the one thing that I can be sure of... One day, Jason and Cohen will know how much I do love them.
Because of the loss that I felt when Jason disappeared from my life, God lead me to a few other outstanding young people who NEEDED MY LOVE as much as I NEEDED THEIR LOVE.
I am blessed by God's Master Plan for me and I am humbled by His love for me. The greatest gifts God has given me through the love of children, most of whom are grown, now, but the joy of GRANDCHILDREN who will love me unconditionally and KNOW that I love them the same.
There is NO blessing or love like that of a child or a soulmate. I've been blessed to know them both.
