Have you ever heard someone say, I can’t imagine what I would do if I lost my child, my parent, my sibling?

Many people can’t imagine or what they imagine is painful. But it actually happening to you is much more painful.

I can imagine because I have lived through something just as awful. It is the blackest hole you will ever be in when you lose someone very close to you.

When my co-worker says “I can’t imagine,” when I tell her my relief that my son was incredibly lucky to not be working out with the weights when a drunk driver plowed into a building he was in. I can imagine exactly what I would do.

I would fall to the ground in disbelief.

I would be driven to the hospital in a utter state of shock. The 5 mile drive would feel like a 5000 mile drive.

I wouldn’t be able to sleep for months.

I wouldn’t be able to drive without bawling my eyes out for months.

I wouldn’t be able to shower without bawling my eyes out for months.

I wouldn’t be able to be alone with my thoughts for more than a few seconds without thinking of him and bawling my eyes out for years.

I would wish for just 5 more minutes to tell him how much I he meant to me.

I have witnessed the incredible pain that parents suffer when they lose a child. While your life eventually goes back to a resemblance of normalcy, that pain is always there, just below the surface, waiting to reignite at the slightest mention of him.

I want you to only have to keep imagining because what it actually feels like is so much worse than what you can ever imagine.

The post I Can Imagine appeared first on I Promise to Be Happy.

Every few months I have dinner with my friends from high school. For the past couple of years, we have been trying to reconnect even though we are all different stages in our life. It has been fairly easily to pick right up where we left off and it is always a time I enjoy.

Sometimes I wonder if people forget, if they don’t realize what they are saying, or realized what they said afterwards and are like “Oh, shit.”

I didn’t say anything at the time but the conversation made me very uncomfortable. As you know if you read this blog, I lost my brother several years ago to an untimely and unexpected death. It has been incredibly hard for me. I know what it is like to lose a sibling, a sibling that was my only sibling growing up.

Anyway, I don’t think my friends even realized what they said when they were casually mentioning how they don’t know how they could go on if they lost their parents and how we were getting to that age where this would start happening with our friends. They couldn’t even imagine.

{uncomfortable agreement and feelings from me}

I don’t know what it feels like to lose a parent. But I sure know  hard as hell what it feels like to lose a sibling. To watch your parents suffer in agony over the loss of a child. This maybe one of the most painful and gut wrenching experience of my life.

Trust me, I don’t want to face the inevitable fact that my parents will eventually die. I definitely don’t wish dying before them upon them. I don’t think either one of them could survive losing another child.

Yes, I know how it feels to lose a sibling. To lose that one and only person that knows what kind of crazy childhood you had. To lose a sibling that never had a family of his own. To lose that special bond with.

My parents are my best friends and we are incredibly close. I feel lucky that they were young parents so hopefully I have still have many, many years before I have to worry about losing them.

But did they even realize how that sounded to someone who had lost someone very close to them? I doubt it but I wouldn’t wish them understanding that feeling either!

The post I Don’t Want You to Understand How This Feels appeared first on I Promise to Be Happy.

My family  has been incredibly lucky over the past year. I know it is hard to believe that I would say something like that after losing my brother, my grandpa, my uncle, the unexpected death of my grandma’s sister, and the four year old son of a cousin in the past six years. Honestly, it seems like it has been much longer than six years when all of this tragedy started…

I can still hear the swish of my uncle’s wind pants coming down the hallway at work, my brother’s boisterous and infection laugh, and the my grandpa barreling down the hallways at work not caring if we are in an important meeting or on a phone call.  At the time, these little interruptions would sometimes irritate me as it meant a break in my work but now I miss these interruptions tremendously.

My first brush with death was when I was pregnant with my daughter when I was 18 years old. My grandpa who had suffered through years of heart conditions, lung issues, eventually died of cancer of the lungs that was detected when they did his autopsy. He was too young, just 61 years old. He was sick for so long but he held on as long as he could. My daughter was born just a day before he would have turned 62 about 10 days after he passed.

So why do I feel lucky? 

I have so many guardian angels watching over my family, which has been apparent in the past year as we have narrowly escaped numerous additional tragedies. I like to think that one of all of my passed on loved ones are watching over our family.

Recently a drunk driver plowed into the building my son was in. They normally are in the exact spot in the back of the building doing workouts where the drunk driver completely immersed his entire car into the building. The exact spot. There was eleven teenage boys in that building that day that would have been there had not one of the kids had a jammed finger. Instead, the instructor decided to adjust their workout so he could participate, which meant no weights at that time.

My oldest daughter, just having her license for a few months, was involved in an accident where she was hit on her driver’s side. She walked away with no visible injuries.

Another child was a witness to a crime last summer, which for legal reasons, I can’t divulge at this time. Let’s just say, thank God, she was just a witness and not the actual victim of the crime. Sometimes made her run away before she could be victimized.

When I think about how many times that we could have lost my brother before his untimely death, I believe we are incredibly lucky he survived as long as he did. The umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck at birth.  When he was about four, he almost drown in my grandparent’s pool, riding his trike into the pool and being submerged during a family gathering. He rolled and totaled a van the very first day he received his driver’s license, escaping complete injury for him and his unbuckled passenger. Then there was the time that he was trying to outrun the police and instead of shooting him dead, an older officer had a feeling that something possibly wasn’t mentally right with him and urged the trigger happy younger officers to use non-lethal force. He escaped death that day by just being tased and pepper sprayed. On a side note, he always told us being tasered was much more preferable to the pepper spray.

When you think about all he went through and those are the just the incidents that I actually know about, there are possibly others, I feel incredibly lucky that he made it to 28 years old.

Maybe, just maybe, one of my passed on loved ones is watching over my children, which is not just luck, it is being cared for and watched over…I like to think that though…and if so, my family is definitely giving them a full workout.

The post Why I Feel Lucky appeared first on I Promise to Be Happy.

Fresh strawberries from my parents garden = Happy. The youngest girl and I were picking strawberries this weekend and they are sooo delicious. Even better knowing they are fresh off the plant!

Can I be Happy for 100 Days in a Row? I’m up for the challenge as a reminder to enjoy every moment of every day! 

The post #100HappyDays Challenge: Day 7 Strawberry Picking appeared first on I Promise to Be Happy.

I’ve mentioned before that my garden makes me happy. Check out my first zucchini of the season. I’m soooo excited and thinking of all the things I can make with zucchini!

Can I be Happy for 100 Days in a Row? I’m up for the challenge as a reminder to enjoy every moment of every day! 

The post #100HappyDays Challenge: Day 6 First Zucchini of Summer appeared first on I Promise to Be Happy.

Last night was SUCH a fun night. #BestNightEver Well, not sure about that but it was a great night to make fun family memories. We hooked up the projector to the laptop and attached to some speakers to watch Jumanji outside on the garage. It was late and a little cool but it was a memorable night that we will not forget.

Part of the fun was before the movie even started with the dancing in front of the projector!

Can I be Happy for 100 Days in a Row? I’m up for the challenge as a reminder to enjoy every moment of every day! 

The post #100HappyDays Challenge: Day 5 Outdoor Movie Night appeared first on I Promise to Be Happy.

Today was a busy day at the baseball fields. This little gal is such a cutie and let me hold her for quite awhile before she wanted her mommy back. These reusable ice cubes are always a hit with her because I think she likes the coldness on her gums!

Can I be Happy for 100 Days in a Row? I’m up for the challenge as a reminder to enjoy every moment of every day! 

The post #100HappyDays Challenge: Day 4 Holding Baby appeared first on I Promise to Be Happy.

Drinking coffee from my #SaveUp mug from Savings.com makes my day today. Drinking coffee = happy. Thinking of the next Save Up in San Antonio near the end of the July makes me happy.  I have been to several Save Up conferences in the past and they are always a great learning experience as well as a great time with blogging friends.

Can I be Happy for 100 Days in a Row? I’m up for the challenge as a reminder to enjoy every moment of every day! 

The post #100HappyDays Challenge: Day 3 Save Up Coffee Mug appeared first on I Promise to Be Happy.

I happened across this picture last week and saw it again in my picture on my computer today. This is one of those pictures that makes you laugh and cry. I laugh because this is a picture that completely showcases my fun brother. In this photo, I’m positive he was making fun of me in some lovable way that only brothers can get away with. It also makes me sad because he is no longer with us to make us laugh.

Can I be Happy for 100 Days in a Row? I’m up for the challenge as a reminder to enjoy every moment of every day! 

The post #100HappyDays Challenge: Day 2 My Brother appeared first on I Promise to Be Happy.

My garden makes me happy. It makes me happy to see all of my vegetables and herbs really growing and starting to bloom.

While I could have been complaining about the rainy days this week, I’m thankful and pleased that the rain was able to give my plants the nourishment that they need.

We are even beginning to see peppers!

I’m also loving my “rouge” pumpkin I have in the garden. I wondered if this would happen when I dumped all of our rotting pumpkins in the garden this fall.

Can I be Happy for 100 Days in a Row? I’m up for the challenge as a reminder to enjoy every moment of every day! 

The post #100HappyDays Challenge: Day 1 My Garden appeared first on I Promise to Be Happy.