Morbid Thoughts

Warning: today's post is a tad sad, so if you're already feeling down, go read some Dave Barry instead.

Over the weekend, I found out about the tragic demise of two different moms. One was my son's coach's wife. I had wondered why he always dragged all of his kids (3 of them) to both the practices and 8 am games and why his wife never made an appearance. During the game, his 8 year old daughter wandered over to chitchat, so I asked her where her mom was. She told me that her mom was dead.

That hit me, and I didn't question her more. We continued to talk, and pretty soon she was asking to sit in my lap. Her hair was messed up (why is it that the men can never do hair?), she had stains all over her shirt, and she was tired of wandering around on her own while her dad was busy coaching. I wanted to adopt her right there and then. Later on, the coach on the opposing team noticed her brother dribbling snot and told him to come to me so that "your mother" can wipe your nose. To which he responded by screaming,"I don't have a mother!" No kid should ever have to utter those words.

Then on Sunday night, we went to Saddleback Church. The husband had gone camping with my daughter and missed our usual church time. He hates to miss church so we went to Saddleback because they have Sunday evening services. Rick Warren was supposed to preach but he had a family emergency. The emergency was that his daughter-in-law, who just had a baby a month ago, was diagnosed with brain cancer.

We don't know what will happen to her, but the possibility of another mom being gone got to me. What if, God forbid, something happened to me? Not that I'm afraid of death or anything, but my kids need me. Please, let it not happen in the next 17 years. Then I thought, really, I could go at any time.

And how do I want the kids to remember me? As the mom who worked a lot to send them to activities, who was always on the computer blogging or working with powerpoint? No, I want to be the mom who sat down with them on the carpet and helped them build their train tracks. I want to be the mom who laughed more often than yelled, the one who took them bird-watching rather than stayed at home doing the laundry.

I don't know if it's some odd chance that I found out about these two tragic women in the short space of two days. But I'm not going to let it go by without learning something from it. So excuse me now while I go romp with my kids.