It's been a while...

I think it was about a week ago, I woke up kind of suddenly from my before-work nap, and found myself thinking about Shane. Specifically about the first two ultrasounds I had, and how they missed what was wrong, BOTH times. I still can't believe that no one told me anything was wrong. It's so frustrating, STILL!That's how it is - all of a sudden it'll just hit me, out of nowhere. That anger and frustration comes back, that feeling that I'm spinning out of control, and I'm just lost and all alone in the middle of a giant fog, and I can't find anyone or anything to help me out of it... I realized soon after, it's right about the time of year I would have found out I was pregnant with him, since his due date was December 19th. I get so lost in it sometimes, I wonder does any of this mean anything at all? Was it supposed to teach me something? Make me want to do something else with my life? Am I where I'm supposed to be, doing what I'm supposed to do? Am I remembering and honoring him the right way? Is he happy when he sees us? Is he with us all the time? I wish I knew what it was like to be a mom of 3 boys, not only 2. There's so many questions, so many things I could dwell on. I'm thankful I only have those moments so rarely. I'd be a different person completely if I didn't have the ability to just let it go, just breathe, just live....

Happy Birthday, Shane.

"Fly on, little wing."

3 Years

It's hard to believe, but this Monday, November 8, 2010, our special little guy would have been 3 years old. I sit here and try to remember all the things that Miles was doing when he was 3, and imagine Shane doing them if he was here with us. Talking up a storm, laughing at his goofy dad, just starting to play board games with us, pretty much starting to run the house from morning til night! Not a day goes by that we don't miss him. Sure, I'll admit it, now that it's been 3 years, most days are good days. It's just seems to be when this season comes around, the time when the leaves start to change and the weather cools off, I can't help but feel a little different, a little less happy, a little less like "myself". I miss him every single day, and some days it just hurts, physically hurts, deep down in my soul. Ever since that day in 2007, I wondered if life would ever feel the same, if it would ever get easier to know that this happened to us, that it wasn't just a dream. Yes - it has gotten easier. No - it'll never be the same. I'll never live another day in my life without a piece of my heart missing. I can't dwell on that though. I have to move on. I have moved on. I'm a very lucky woman to have such an amazing family. My husband and my 2 boys Miles and Owen have been 3 people in my life that could make me smile no matter what the circumstances. I still remember when I was in labor with Shane, being induced for 28 - YES 28 - whole hours, and despite the dreary and uncertain future we were about to face, being able to smile and laugh with eachother for most of that day. That right there is the miracle that is love. I'm the luckiest woman on earth to share that with this man, my husband. As I said before, not a day will go by that I don't have a piece of my heart missing, but on the brighter side of that, I get to live the rest of my life with all this light and love surrounding me each and every day. If anything comes close to filling in that hole, that's it.
I still have all the emails and cards and letters that everyone sent to us when we were going through this in 2007. Every year, I do my best to read through some of them, not so I can relive the pain, but so I can remember the support and love I got from so many of the people we know and love. I just want to say thank you for everyone's continued support through the good times and bad. And thank you for anyone who just listens when I talk about him. Keep me up to date on anything that you do to remember our little man - just drop me an email or a comment on my blog post. Whether it be simply lighting a candle for him, thinking of him, or saying a little prayer for him. You can also feel totally safe in sending me a message for Shane to my email (dadoo12704@gmail.com) and I can post it on his blog, with or without your name attached. Thank you for visiting Shane's site.
Peace!

My grandma, Ruby Cline, passed away after a long battle with cancer on June 3, 2010. This was a display of flowers at her wake - each of the roses represent all of her living great grandchildren, and the butterfly is for the little angel who was awaiting her arrival.....

Thank you once again for remembering our baby boy and keeping him a part of us even though he is not here. We miss him so much each and every single day....

PS. I guess I inherited a love for the same candy bar....ha ha!

It's been a while!

It's so hard to keep up with things! Sorry I haven't posted in a while! I just realized I have a couple things to share when it comes to the subject of our little angel...

First off, I'll share something very special that happened on Mother's Day this year - a sweet little Mother's Day gift to me, and a little reminder that I am a mom of 3 boys, not just the 2 that are here with me. My family & I went to spend the day at my mom & dad's house. All the kids were outside playing shortly after we got there, and suddenly we looked over and saw a balloon floating up to the clouds, and then a little girl from the neighbor's house ran over and was really upset because she had let go of it only moments before. Miles, being the social little guy he is, went up to her and started explaining to her where that balloon was going. In his sweet little words, "It's okay, Shane's up there." He proceeded to explain to her that Shane would take her balloon and have a great time playing with it in heaven. My dad was outside and witnessed this with me, and we both had the same thought at the same time - thank God my mom didn't see or hear that as it was happening, or she would have busted out in tears! (As she probably is right now, reading this....) So thank you Shane, for that Mother's Day gift.

Then, just a few weeks later, we got a wedding invitation in the mail. Mike had opened it earlier in the day, and I came home later to find it on the counter. As I was going through the contents, I didn't notice at first, but then I realized and I had to do a double take - this extremely awesome couple had listed our names on the inner envelope - Mike, Carrie, Miles, Shane, and Owen. They will never know how much that touched my heart - it absolutely made my day. Sometimes you go on with your life thinking people forgot, you think you're the only one who knows what it's like to have that big hole in your heart that will never be filled up again, that you will carry with you until the day you die. It's those sweet little reminders that give you a little bit of peace. So thank you for that....

I also wanted to give an update on my previous post...Shane's Gang was very successful once again! We walked in Bolingbrook this year, and we raised about $2600 in memory of our little man. We had about 27 people walking (including kids) with our team this year, which is more than ever. The greatest surprise of the day was Shane's Gang being announced on the loud speakers at the end of the walk as the Top New Family Team for the Bolingbrook Walksite! We went up on stage and accepted our plaque, and we were quite honored! Thank you so much to everyone who walked or donated. It means so much to us that every year we continue to be so successful in doing this walk in our son's memory. We can't wait to do it again next year - we're moving the walk back downtown this year - hope you'll all come with us!

Thanks for reading...sorry it's been so long! Keep thinking of our little angel....

XOXO

Shane's Gang is back in action!!

I love the New Year - because it`s time once again to think about our little angel Shane, and for our annual March for Babies walk in memory of him!

I`m so excited for this year & I think it's going to be a very successful walk!! I`ve picked a walksite that is both closer AND much shorter than the Lakefront walk! It`s 1/2 the distance and much closer to home! I`m really hoping that this will bring out more walkers this year! I thought it would be easier for families with kids to bring them along in their wagons or strollers this year! I'll keep you all up to date, but since it's a shorter walk, we might even have a little get together for lunch & goodies at our house after the walk...more info to come on that...stay tuned!

We will be walking this year on Sunday, April 25, 2010
at the Promenade Bolingbrook Mall in Bolingbrook, Illinois.
Registration starts at 8:00 AM and the walk starts at 9:00 AM.

Wanna help us? There are 2 ways!
First, all you have to do is visit the team's website by clicking here - http://www.marchforbabies.org/team/t1300753 -
and then click on either "Join This Team" (in the center of the page) or "Donate to This Team" (on the left side of the page).

If you want to donate:
You can donate ANY amount you'd like to - every single little bit counts and is MUCH appreciated! You can donate to any specific walker on our team, by clicking on their name (at the bottom of the team page) or you can make a team donation by using the link above.

If you want to walk with us:
When you click on "Join This Team", you will then set up your own site to collect donations for our team. Whether you get no donations or just a little something, you can still walk with us! You can also email me, the team captain, @ dadoo12704@yahoo.com and let me know if you'd like to purchase a Shane's Gang t-shirt for the walk! They are white long sleeved cotton t-shirts, very nice! They run about $20, maybe a little less if I have a big order. I can send you a picture of one if you'd like to see them. You can also change the style if you'd like to a regular t-shirt, or even a hoodie!

Whichever way you decide you'd like to help, every single year we truly appreciate you thinking of our little boy Shane and all the other babies out there that need the March of Dimes help.

Let's make this Shane`s Gang`s BIGGEST year yet!

Love and thanks to you all,
Shane's Family - Mike, Carrie, Miles, & Owen
And all the team members, past or present, of Shane's Gang!

The Lovely Bones

As most of you already know, I love to read. I recently found a book called The Lovely Bones. It's the story of a girl who was murdered. She looks down on her family's and her murderer's life from heaven. The book is told from her perspective; it is her talking. The whole entire book was amazing. There were so many lines and paragraphs and even entire pages that made me think of Shane. While I was reading, at moments it would make me smile to think that he might be looking down on us and watching us live our lives just like this girl did. Then I got to the end, and there was a paragraph that hit home for me. She was summing it all up, she had figured it out.

"As I watched my family sip champagne, I thought about how their lives trailed backward and forward from my death....These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections - sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent - that happened after I was gone. And I began to see things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it. The events that my death wrought were merely the bones of a body that would become whole at some unpredictable time in the future. The price of what I came to see as this miraculous body had been my life."

I seriously had to stop reading and take a deep breath. It is so cool for me to think of Shane's impact on us in that way; that his body is living, in another way, through us. Every time I make a new connection & share my story with someone who has also lost their baby, everytime I hug Miles & Owen, & think of Shane, or everytime Mike holds me & we think of Shane together, those are all of his "bones" coming together, forming his body, his "new" life.

Throughout the book, the girl visits and stays with her family during the times that they need her most. When she sees that there is closure to a certain thing, she slips away. She compares this to a "woman in the back of a lecture hall or theater whom no one notices until she slips out...only those near the door themselves notice, to the rest it is like an unexplained breeze in a closed room."

She also talks about how sometimes she does things that stump the humans and leave them grateful. Her brother on earth had planted a garden, only he mixed flowers with vegetables and had no order to it whatsoever. His grandmother always hated it because she was trying to teach him how to plant things, but he didn't listen. He wanted to do it his way. One year his sister decided to come down and bloom all of his plants and flowers and weeds all at once, just to let him know she was there. That made me smile. In the fall of 2008, as Shane's 1st birthday was approaching, I asked him one day when I was leaving for work if he could just give me a sign, some small sign that he was there. Fall is usually a hard time for me, when the leaves are changing, it just brings back all those feelings again. When I got home from work the next morning, I noticed that our trees in the front yard were the only ones on our block that were full, from top to bottom, of these little white flowers. Some might call me crazy, but I took that as the sign.

I love books like this that make you notice all the little things. If you're looking for a good one to read, I would definitely pick this one up. There is also a movie version of the book coming out - you can see the preview here - http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/thelovelybones/. It looks excellent.

XOXO!