To Mother (from 'Captivating' by John & Stasi Eldredge

As large as the role our mothers have played, the word "mother" is more powerful when used as a verb than as a noun. All women are not mothers but all women are called to mother. To mother is to nurture, to train, to educate, to rear. As daughters of Eve, all women are uniquely gifted to help others in their lives become more of who they truly are - to encourage, nurture and mother them towards their true selves. In doing this, women partner with Christ in the vital mission of bringing forth life.

The nurturing of life is a high and holy calling. And as a woman, it is yours. Yes, it takes many shapes and has a myriad of faces. Yes, men are called to this as well. But uniquely and deeply, this calling makes up part of the very fiber of a woman's soul - the calling to mother.

All women are called to mother. And all women are called to give birth. Women give birth to all kinds of things - to a book (it's nearly as hard as a child, believe me), to a church or to a movement. Women give birth to ideas, to creative expressions, to ministries. We birth life in others by inviting them into deeper realms of healing, to deeper walks with God, to deeper intimacy with Jesus. A woman is not less of a woman because she is not a wife or has not physically born a child. The heart and life of a woman is much vaster than that. All women are made in the image of God in that we bring forth life. When we enter into our world and into the lives of those we love and offer our tender and strong feminine hearts, we cannot help but mother them.

The capacity of a woman's heart for meaningful relationships is vast. There is no way your husband or your children can ever provide the intimacy and relational satisfaction you need. A woman must have women friends.

It is here, in the realm of relationship that women receive the most joy and the profoundest sorrows. The friendships of women inhabit a terrain of great mystery. There is a fierce jealousy, a fiery devotion and a great loyalty between women friends. Our friendships flow in the deep waters of the heart where God dwells and transformation takes place. It is here, in this holy place that a woman can partner with God in impacting another and be impacted by another for lasting good. It is here that she can mother, nurture, encourage and call forth Life.

To have a woman friend is to relax into another soul and be welcomed in all that you are and all that you are not. To know that, as a woman, you are not alone. Friendships between women provide a safe place to share in the experiences of life as a woman.

Frustration and Sadness

This post is not targeted at anyone.  It is a general overview of the path my grief has taken.  If you read this and get angry at me, that is your right.  But my goal is not to hurt anyone, but to express my pain.  I don’t want to sound ungrateful.  We received a lot of cards, and I know a lot of people prayed for us.  And we felt those prayers and were very thankful.

Many members of my family are not supportive.  No one in my family (in-laws and immediate) except my sister and daddy ever say John Preston’s name.

Many of my previous friends weren’t supportive.  No one gave me hand-made, thoughtful gifts - no one gave me gifts period after John Preston died.  No one ever visited his gravesite after his burial. 

But the average joe is clueless, and a lot of them want to stay that way.  And although I can’t really blame them, it still hurts, it still makes me angry and it still makes it an extremely lonely grief. 

I will tell you this…the friends who did / do support me, the friends who did stick around, the family members who do mention John Preston’s name…they will ALWAYS be important to me, and I will NEVER forget what they have done for me.  I won’t list them here, even though I would love to.  But it isn’t because I would hurt someone’s feeling who didn’t support me, but because I might forget to list someone who did.  Not that I have forgotten them, but I might not think of them right this minute.

Sometimes I get really jealous of my friends who received gifts for their angel babies.  Handmade gifts, purchased gifts, donations, memorials, people visiting the grave sites.  The only thing that we got from anyone when John Preston died was a Christmas ornament at a memorial service that the funeral home performed for all the families who had lost someone buried by them during the year of 2008.  My sister and niece and nephew made donations to St. Jude’s in memory of him.  That’s it.  Nothing else until his 3^rd birthday this year from the board members of CrossHeart Ministries.

This is why it is so important to find a group like CrossHeart Ministries.  The women I have met there understand my grief over the loss of my son.  Many of them will never understand the emptiness that sometimes stretches out before us as a life without children.    But they understand and validate that I have a son, that I am a mother, that my child was REAL, that he IS real, and that just because he is not here on earth with me doesn’t make him any less important than the children who are here on earth with their parents.

I wrote this not long ago to some of my friends after my first Grief Share session:

“One of the things that hit me was that in the midst of grief you find things to be grateful for. One of the things brought up was that as much as you hate to make friends this way, when you find people who have been through what you have been through, strong relationships are built on those shared experiences. And that is so awesome.

BUT, something I find even more amazing and to be honored and admired is this: the friends that haven't been through it, and don't totally know, but that stick around and suffer through it anyway because of their love and their empathy for the friend who is. It is easy for me to sit and listen endlessly to someone whose mom died when they were young because I relate to that, I understand that, I can empathize with it. It is much harder (and close to impossible) for me to sit and listen to someone who has lost their right arm. I don't understand that. I might think ‘why don't they just learn to use a prosthetic?’, or ‘why don't they just learn to write with their left hand?’.  I don't understand the struggle that goes with that loss.. It would take ALOT for me to have the patience and the empathy and the energy to sit and listen to that person hurt and cry and bemoan their loss.

But those rare friends that haven’t been through what I have been through, still sat and listened to me cry, yell, talk, analyze, complain, whine, holler, pat myself on the back, criticize myself, criticize others, etc., etc. for hours and hours and hours on end without one complaint and with lots of understanding and patience and empathy and tears. I have made John Preston a huge part of my life, as I believe I should have. But it has cost me friendships because not everyone had that patience and empathy and they got tired of the John Preston Saga.

Not those friends. Nothing I have ever done deserves that kind of devotion and commitment. Only God sends that type of blessing to mere humans.

I am so thankful to those friends from the depths of my grief, pain, joy and heart. I selfishly cannot imagine my life without them, and can't ever possibly repay such devotion, love and selflessness as they showed me.”

TOTAL SUCCESS!!! A Walk to Remember will not be forgotten.

Saturday, October 8 WAS a walk to remember. We had over 100 people attend and walk. Over 65 balloons were released for all the sweet angel babies. It was a perfectly beautiful day, with a light cool breeze and sunshine at a beautiful park. I personally was suprised, overjoyed and intensely touched that my cousin, Murray, and his wife Jaime and my cousin, Melody, and her husband Brad attended along with my Uncle Leon who led the opening prayer for our ceremony. My other cousin (their brother), Michael and his wife Darla lost a baby girl over 10 years ago, and I was honored that Melody released a balloon for my little angel cousin, Hope McKenzie.

It was a bittersweet day in that it is overwhelmingly sad how many people need support, but healing and thrilling that they allow us to provide support for them!

I wasn't able to take any pictures, but Torrie from Seavers Photography took alot, and my friend Peggy Haguewood took a few of my family. Here are a few...

Our banner!

Releasing John Preston's balloons.

Tiffany releases balloons for several LAMBS who couldn't attend!

We're in it together...

In the forefront are our friends Tiffany and Brenden; in the center is my friend and co-worker Lani, who released a balloon for her angel baby sister, Vickie Lynn.

Robin releases balloons for her 10 Baby Crosses, and for John David, her son.

The CrossHeart Team (from left):
Amy, Robin (our fearless leader), me, Ashley, Tiffany and Molly

So many families affected!

Jimmy Ray and I led the walk for John Preston!

My little family...

My friend Lisa, who sponsored the set-up fee for our shirts, and her dad.  Her mom took the picture!

My Uncle Leon and my cousin Melody and me!

A Walk to Remember - Preparation

So tomorrow is one of my new norm favorites.  It is the day that CrossHeart Ministries hold it's annual Walk to Remember in celebration of National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month.  As hard and as sad as it is that I have to be a part of this month and this day, it is an awesome day to celebrate the LIFE of my stillborn, but STILL BORN son, John Preston.  Getting ready for (as a CHM board member) and looking forward to (as a Mommy to an Angel) this event, and then participating in the event as a mommy is totally worth the major emotional and physical exhaustion that will follow.  But I will go every year for the rest of my life and be completely willing to suffer the consequences. 

Here is a picture of our t-shirt.

I can't wait.  My husband and I are going to lead the walk for John Preston.  We will walk around the lake twice.  Then we will release a balloon for him, along with 63 other parents of angel babies.  We will be with people who understand us and our loss and our never ending pain and none of them will be uncomfortable or awkward and everyone will say John Preston's name without pause and no one will look at us like we have the plague.  We will be in a situation in which for once we will be 'normal'.

Thank you Ronald Reagan for proclaiming this a National Day of Awareness.  Thank you CrossHeart Ministries for hosting this event. 
Thank you Robin Cross for finding me and throwing me the life saver that is CrossHeart Ministries. 
Thank you Jimmy Ray Sloan for giving me the greatest gifts you could give me - your love and our son, John Preston.
Thank you God for all of it.

CrossHeart Ministries Second Annual Walk to Remember
Johnson Park in Collierville, TN
October 8, 2011 from 10:00am - Noon

So, about my mom...

So I always tell the story of John Preston in the following manner:

Losing my son is most horrible thing that ever happened to me.  I have had such a blessed life, a great family, a great support system growing up, a great church and youth group, a great husband, great in-laws.  My life has been really good...oh except for my mom dying when I was 15.

THAT is why my therapist says I treat my mom's death as a side note in my life.

But since John Preston died alot of the emotions that I didn't feel at the time have surfaced.  So here is the story.

When I was 12, my dad took a 2-year contract job in Saudia Arabia.  He was there for about a year when my mom started having some stomach pains.  He came home for a week in 1982 thinking he was going with her for some tests, but when they went in the doctor simply said "You need to stay home. Don't go back."  She was diagnosed with colon cancer and given 3 months to live.  I fell apart that night.  She and my dad decided that they were going to try anything and everything so she put herself in a program for testing methods. 

The doctors put a pump in her side that shot out chemo every hour or so.  That didn't work.  Except that every time we went to the mall it set off the sensors and she had to get out her little paper and show the mall cops.

Then daddy took her to a specialist in Germany under the guise of a European vacation for the family.  That didn't work, but we had a wonderful time and made memories that will never be forgotten.

Then she did regular chemo and radiation.  That didn't work, but after she lost all her hair it grew back twice as thick and twice as curly and gorgeous.

Daddy got a job at FedEx and mom had great insurance. 

On Monday, July 30, 1984 mom went in for a regular check up.  While she was there her veins collapsed.  By Tuesday, July 31 she was in a coma.  Thursday, August 2, 1994 she quietly passed away while my daddy, sister, brother and I stood around her bed singing to her.  10 minutes after she died, her parents, my grandparents stepped off the elevator at the hospital.  My grandmother never spoke another word or at another bite.

Barely 2 weeks later on Wed, August 14, my grandparents were hit by a car crossing the street on their way home from church.  My granddaddy's leg was broken, but my grandmother sustained severe head trauma.  Exactly 2 weeks after my mother died, my grandmother died from that head injury. 

My mother donated her body to science so we didn't have a funeral, but instead had a memorial service in Memphis, TN and then another in Knoxville, TN at the church where my parents had attended church for the 20 years previous to the 6 we had lived in Memphis before she died.

Apparently my parents didn't read the fine print in the contract with UT Medical Services, because in January of 1985, my dad received a call telling him that they were done with my mother's body and he could come pick her up.  Talk about shock.  My dad couldn't even comprehend it, and so my Uncle Leon (my mother's brother) took care of her.  My dad didn't tell us about it at the time.  It had only been a few months, things were just settling back to normal (or the new normal for us) and he felt like he should give us some time.  The longer he waited the harder it got to bring it up and tell us.

So at our family Christmas get together in January of 2010, 1 year and 5months after John Preston died, my dad told us that our mother was buried in a plot at Historic Elmwood Cemetary in Memphis in the section dedicated to people who had done as my mother had done, and what my father still plans to do.

I am not sure how my brother and sister felt about it, but it was a good day for me.  I thought he made the right decision to not tell us at the time - especially me, as I was only 15, a teenager with enough normal problems in addition to my mom being dead, to also have to imagine all of that.  Maybe he shouldn't have waited 26 years.  But also, I was glad to know there was a place to go where I could honor my mom, and have a place to go and spend quiet time dedicated just to her.  It was quite a shock though.

So for the past 2 Mother's Days I have spent the day at my mother's grave and my son's grave.  It's a little rough.  One of the things I say to whoever will listen is that I didn't get to have a mom, and I don't get to be a mom.  Those are the days that I get angry and bitter.

Mother's Day 2011 with John Preston

Mother's Day 2010 with my mother, the first in 26 years.

But then, again, I realize how blessed my life has been up until the loss of John Preston - with the exception of my mom dying of course.

Part 3 of 3 of an awesome October 2, 2011

So although this day has had some hard moments, it has mostly been filled with joy.  And it just keeps getting better.  We went to the zoo - and of course Brad paid for ALL of us to get into the zoo cause he is just awesome like that.  (Jimmy Ray paid for breakfast, Glenna paid for lunch, Brad paid for gas and zoo, Glenna paid for dinner, JR paid for coffee.  It was a Battle of the Payers.  I of course got away scott free!!!)  Anyway, we had the best time.  We ate greasy burgers and corn dogs for lunch.  Then we went into the "animals of the night" exhibit - awch! It stunk, but was still pretty cool.  I thought for sure I'd have nightmares.  We saw the polar bears, the alligators, the monkeys, the gorillas...

(A baby started crying while we were sitting there watching this female silver back.  When she heard the baby she started making cooing noises similiar to what human women make for their own babies.  It was sweet / surreal / freaky.)










...the zebras, the giraffes (including a baby one!), the lions...

(She was lying down and then all of a sudden got up and hopped up on the log like she heard or saw something excited.  I am glad she wasn't looking at me!) 



...and the coolest experience for me ever at a zoo was when we saw the grizzly bears.



Yes, that is a real, live, grizzly bear.  No, there is no glass between me and the bear.  No, this is not a telephoto lens.  Yes, that is a real live grizzly bear less than 3 feet from my EYE.  Coolest picture I will probably ever take!

We ended the day with a ridiculously yummy dinner at Colton's steakhouse.  Then we came back to our house, hung out for awhile and then Glenna and Brad hit the road at 9:30pm!

I cried as they rode out the driveway, but it was so worth it and we had the best time.  It was a much needed break from the heaviness that had been my heart this past week.  My sister is the second greatest person on earth (the first being Jimmy Ray, of course).  We always have so much fun with them as couples. 

What an awesome awesome fun bittersweet exciting hilarious weekend!  Thanks Brad and Glenna for driving up for the day to be with us.  Thanks Jimmy Ray for taking a RARE day off to spend with me and my favorite people.

Part 2 of 3 of an awesome October 2, 2011 ...

After visiting John Preston, we went to mid-town and ate lunch at a cool, funky, yummy eatery called 'Cafe Eclectic' which has an awesome brunch on Sundays.  I highly recommend it!!!! 

Then we all went to visit my mom's gravesite at Elmwood Cemetary (currently the website is all about halloween, but it is a beautiful and historic cemetary).  I have been several times so it doesn't really get to me as much (plus, as my therapist says, I sometimes refer to my mother's death as a 'side note' in my life...but that is a whole nother post!).  But it was very emotional for my sister.  I think especially with all the changes going on in her life - she's fixing to get married, Ryan is fixing to get married, Megan is zooming through college, etc.  But anyway, it was a bittersweet and terribly beautiful visit.

Glenna and Brad with the flowers we brought.

Me and my sister.

The beautiful live roses that Glenna and Brad brought.

The flowers Jimmy Ray and I bought along with the roses.

 After this we headed to the zoo!