No one likes getting punched in the stomach

The past couple weeks have been very busy for us. So busy in fact that I'm not entirely sure where the past month went. I remember thinking on June 1st how fast things were going to come at us, but I didn't even realize that typing this on - oh! *sidebar - it's actually Bridget's 10 month bday today* - June 26th, that the past 4 weekends would seem like such a blur. With this influx of crazy life things, I wanted to make sure to take a little time to highlight an event that I think, (I hope) was a nice one and a baby step in the healing direction for my cousin's family. This is the cousin that lost his wife to breast cancer last month.

So you can probably guess, but the event was the Race for the Cure on June 16th. I was pretty excited about going to this since I didn't get to go last year (I don't know why - maybe because I was 7 1/2 months pregnant, but honestly, I think it was more that Tim was out of town and I was lazy without him, but anyway... I didn't make it last year). It's probably better that I wasn't there last year so that I didn't have the memory of Karla in a pink survivor shirt crossing the survivor finish line. I can't imagine what they must have been feeling doing all the same things they did last year but without the hope and optimism that she had beaten cancer and most of all without her.

It was hard enough for me and I didn't expect how sad it would make me, so I can only imagine how they were feeling. Now, on the flip side, there was a sense of doing something. Something small, yet something important and hopefully something that Karla would want us to do... we kept fighting for her.

They've been kicked in the teeth by cancer - given a "cancer-free" diagnosis only to have her taken from them in less than a year from that diagnosis. And yet they got back up. Not even a month after losing a mom and wife, they put on their "Karla's Krew" shirts and they kept fighting. Fighting for her memory and fighting for all the other women that are still fighting and it was powerful to watch and be a part of. I don't know if I would have that strength.

I once asked my mom and dad, shortly after Ryan had died, when you stop feeling like you are getting punched in the gut. It's like you're going along fine, you even start to sing along with the car radio again and then there it is - whammo - right there, right in the pit of your stomach all the way up to your throat. It's that feeling that all is not right in the world. When, actually, in reality, all will never be "right" again.

Maybe part of the healing process is to find your new "right"- perhaps it's finding a way to honor and remember those that we have lost. Maybe it's through events like Race for the Cure or maybe it's just simply finding a way to connect with those we have lost, that we keep memory alive and find strength and, hopefully over time, we find we are getting punched in the stomach a little less and singing along with the radio a little more.

Karla, I know these days I'm singing along to Jimmy Buffett's "Barefoot Children in the Rain" with a little less sadness and a little more strength... for you.

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Take a look at the whole album here.

Race for the Cure