Silent killer

Happy Saturday,

How are you all doing on this amazing Saturday morning? I think we’re in store for a beautiful day. Our morning is a tad bit overcast, but, the sun is promising to poke it’s head out of the clouds and bring us a bright, sunny afternoon. What are your plans for the weekend? Drop me a comment, I’d love to hear from you all.

Hey, huge favor to ask. Would you all mind subscribing to my blog? My goal is to have 100 subscribers by my birthday, which is fast approaching. August is my birthday month and I’m really trying to grow my blog and I’m trying to set goals and accomplish them. Not always easy, but I sure would love to hit this one. Anyway, I sure would appreciate you subscribing.

Today is going to be a busy day. I need to finish packing up the extra storage we have before tackling Johns linen closet. Holy smokes, it’s so much more then linens and towels in there. Its a kaboodle of all kinds of what nots. Wish me luck.

Yesterday I spent the day helping my friend whose daughter passed away unexpectedly clear out some of her personal things. Going through the belongings of your child, no matter how old he/she is, it’s not a normal thing to do. We’re not supposed to go before our children. No parent should ever bury their child. No parent should have to sit by the bedside of their daughter and watch the machines be turned off. No parent should watch their child take their last breath. It’s not supposed to be that way.

When a mother becomes pregnant with a child, she feels her babies first kicks, first hiccups, she is there when that miracle enters this world and takes their first breath, but a mother should not have to watch their child take their last. It’s not supposed to be this way.

I know many parents out there have gone through this experience and my heart hurts even thinking about how many more parents will have to endure the pain that comes with losing a child.

I lost my dad in 2020 and to this day, I miss him. I lost my granny in 2021 and I miss her. I still talk to them, and my heart does have a void, and I’m grateful they lived fairly long lives. Dad was only 74 when he passed, and granny was 90+. Though dying is a natural part of life, it’s still hard to lose someone in the natural order of things. Losing a child though, even an adult child, that’s beyond hard.

My friends child was a grown woman, an accomplished woman. She graduated USC and her career path was one in which she helped children with certain disabilities. She also suffered from a debilitating disease, but it wasn’t the disease she had been diagnosed with many years ago that took her life. NO, it was a silent killer. It was something she didn’t even know she had until two weeks prior to her passing.

I won’t give her name or my friends name out of respect for the family, and I won’t be able to tell you exactly what she died from, but I will say this to you, ladies, please keep up on your health and exams. Keep up on routine check ups and please, if you notice symptoms within your body that last more than a few days, be that patient who goes to the doctor and demand to have test run. It might save your life.

My friend Kathy is always telling me to demand certain tests when I share with her things that are going on with my health. She’s taught me to not allow certain symptoms to go unchecked for months and months. I was one of the lucky ones, the abnormality in one of my breast came back no cancer at this time, but the doctor does want to check me again in six months. When my mamogram came back abnormal and the doctor said, let’s recheck in a year and added the comment, “I don’t THINK we have anything to worry about,” that was enough for Kathy to explain to me, “NO, demand a sonogram.” I did and thank goodness, I’m free and clear for now.

No mother should ever have to watch their child suffer in pain from a silent killer, or from any disease for that matter, but many do. Could my friends daughter still be alive if she would have gone in sooner for her discomfort? We’ll never know. It was a silent killer that took her. No symptoms until the very end. Perhaps following up with routine exams would have made for a different outcome? Again, we’ll never know.

Many diseases are silent killers, many times people don’t even know they have them. Another friend shared with me recently about her brother who passed from something that, if he had gone in sooner for his mild discomforts he was having, it may have saved his life.

We just never know. We never know when it’s our time. We never know what deadly disease is living within our own bodies, waiting for it’s grand entrance, only to take our curtain down. Please dear readers, keep up a regular routine of exams and doctor visits. You might just save a life! Your own!

Watching a friend grieve and be in this much pain is a horrible thing to witness. I have to stop, take a deep breath, step back and thank God I still have my beautiful babies and I beg of God to let my friends soul find some sort of peace, because she is devastated. My friend watched her beautiful daughter enter this world and she watched her leave. Now, my friend is left to pick up the pieces of her own life and move ahead. She’s struggling. She’s heartbroken, she’s lost, she’s angry, and I know there’s so many more emotions I’m not even sure we’ve scratched the surface of.

“A mother will never get over losing her daughter! Doesn’t matter how long…or how old the daughter was… or how they die. She lives with this pain every moment of her life.”-Unknown.

I’ve heard it said, there’s a special bond between mother and daughter. That’s a relationship that’s never been familiar to me, but so many mother’s and daughters do have a special bond and I can’t help but be saddened by how much harder those deaths are.

“A mother NEVER gets over losing her child. It doesn’t matter how long it’s been, how old her child was when they died, or the reason they were taken away. GRIEF does not ever expire. Never tell a mother who’s child DIED to move on, get over it, or ‘be happy’ that their child is in heaven now. You are ‘sick’ of hearing about it? She has to live with it EVERY single day.”-unknown.

Yesterday when I left my friends home, I told her I’d be back on Sunday to help her clear out more of her daughters belongings. She hugged me and said, “thank you. Today God used you to be in service to others. This is your calling and this is what you were meant to do.”

If this is what being in service to others looks like, I am beyond grateful that God used me to be there for my friend. In my wildest dreams I would have never thought of this as being in service to someone. I simply thought I was helping a friend with something that she shouldn’t have to do alone. Honestly, I just hate to think of her being alone at all right now. As she said when I was getting ready to leave, “I don’t think anymore. I have no thoughts. I can’t even put things into words. My brain hurts to think.”

I don’t think she’s hit the wall of grief yet. She’s in over drive trying to get funeral arrangements made. She’s trying to have everything done just so. She wants her daughters funeral too be as perfect as she was in her eyes.

Yesterday, we sat for a moment to have a little lunch. My friend was talking about the flowers for the casket. She talked about where her daughters body was at that moment, then, she looked up at me, her eyes were glazed over and she said, “after the viewing, the casket will be shut and locked, never to be open again. I’ll never see her face, or be able to touch her. The casket will be locked and she will be laid to rest. She’s gone from this earth forever.”

How do you say goodbye, how do you say goodbye to your baby girl? I hope she will soon see God opening his arms to her, reaching out and embracing her. I hope when she is alone in her thoughts, she finds His comfort. I pray she’ll be okay.

Well guys, I must say goodbye for now. I need to get a few things done. Please, take care of yourself and your loved ones. You matter. You are worthy and you are uniquely made. Embrace the love that surrounds you. Maybe today you reach out and tell those in your life you love them. We just never know when those special people in our lives may be taking their last breath.

Until next time, don’t forget, Love Life++ Hugs.