Turning Negatives into Positives

As a bereaved parent one of the coping mechanisms you learn pretty quickly is turning negatives into positives. You have to. Your world becomes so surrounded with pain and sadness that if you dont figure out a way to cope with it you will have an extremely hard time accepting and moving forward with life. At least that's the way I see it.

As the end of September approached it became time for my husband to pull down the Halloween decorations. I went through them, happily encouraged that I actually felt like decorating. The last holiday I decorated for was Valentine's Day. In fact, a little red wooden heart I put out at the beginning of February still hung by the front door. I hung it just a few days before Nolan passed away.

After pulling out a few items I quickly came across something that made my heart sink. It was Nolan's trick or treating pumpkin. I had forgotten all about it. My mom had it made for him last year when I was still pregnant. It matched his big brother's. I grabbed it and held onto it and cried. My baby boy was never going to be able to use it. Then I looked at and almost became angry and annoyed with it. What nerve for this object to be sitting there waiting for me to find it and pull it out only to remind me that it was never going to be used.

Then I fought back. Dammit, I AM going to use it. In fact, Im going to put it out every year! There's no reason why my son's pumpkin should be shoved into a box to be forgotten about. Nolan is still part of our family's Halloween. He always will be! I then became happy to have it. Happy that I had something to put out for Halloween that was Nolan's.

Life is funny that way, ya know? We live day in and day out taking tomorrow for granted. Hell, we take next year for granted! We assume that spending tomorrow with the ones we love is always going to be there.

The only guarantee in life is that there are none.