The Peace We All Need.

I'm at my kitchen dining table listening to the fire lapping up the crackling wood. God, I love that sound. It seems to soften all the rough edges in my mind.
My son, Michael will be 23 this coming January. He was normal to the eye at birth. He had learned how to ride a bike with training wheels when he was five years old and was learning to play the harmonica. Our whole family is musical. His father plays guitar and I play the piano. The neighborhood gardener named him Troubles because he was so mischievious. Like his storybook character, Curious George, he was always curious. favorite
Michael and his sister Jennifer were both born on the island of Hawaii. We had lived there since 1980. When he was 5 years 11 mos. old, I was shopping at a department store called Liberty House in Kaneohe and had brought him with me. While I was looking at a blouse and had my back turned on him, he had wandered off, being curious as usual. I turned and a few seconds later and I couldn't see him. I anxiously called out his name and began to walk around in search of him. That's when I saw my son lying flat on his back, his face blue and not moving. I began to scream over and over, "Call 911!" as I held his limp body in my arms. Part of me died that day and has never been revived but the parametics did come and Michael was revived. The parametics told me he had had a seizure and to contact his doctor. That marked the beginning of a kind of madness. The kind that cries out to God, "How could you take this beautiful child and bring him into a life of affliction?" I think what can make the madness is no answer. Heaven is silent. That is maddening. But we survive don't we, so is that an answer? Maybe.
That was day one of this chapter in my story with my son, Michael, whom i love more than my life. That unforgettable event marked the beginning of many more days filled with unbearable grief, doctors, medications, emergency rooms, dreams dashed and of course all the well meaning people whose words or lack of them made me feel alone and invisible.
All of our lives are filled with some kind of grief or sadness. So where do we find the peace we need? I think maybe we find it in the little things. The moments in between the madness, where joy can still be found in watching your children sound asleep, hearing their laughter, or the spark of hope that tomorrow might just be better.