Inside my hands these petals browned
It's funny how events in your life stick with you at certain times of the year. Each year at the anniversary of my Mom's death and her birthday, I wake up and think about being in Kingston, Jamaica. I am glad that I had the opportunity to go there in college and I miss it a lot. I sound like a broken record every year but it was one of the greatest things I have ever done. I always think about how each evening we would have reflections on the day and everyone would talk about anything and everything. Then one person would have some time to present a sort of show and tell about themselves. Most people did not take it seriously, which was sad...they would read a Bible verse that they said had significance to their life, but they really just opened the Bible and picked a random verse. I printed out the lyrics for Rise Against's "The Good Left Undone" before the trip...their album was going to be released until the Fall but the lyrics were already posted and were very good. When it was my turn to present, I read those lyrics and almost couldn't finish them because I was choking up. I explained to everyone (half of the people there I had just met on that trip, so they just thought I was the funny, skinny kid) that the lyrics reminded me of my mom and how she had passed away in my senior year of high school. After my mom had passed I had some distant cousins trying to "help me cope" by telling me what I had to do in the mourning process because they "understood what I was going through." Really? You do? I learned that it was hard to tell people, especially almost complete strangers, about the struggles I had at one of the most difficult times of my life, but that it helped me to not keep everything bottled up. I didn't mean to make everyone in the room cry that night, but it was very moving. I felt a little bad because no one knew what I was going to talk about...but I wanted to tell them all about how passionate my mom was. The reason I'm making this post is because it is my mom's birthday today...she would have been 54 today. I thank God everyday that he let me have such a loving family.