March 18, 2004

This is no ordinary day.
Today is not a day that I can pass off as any other regular day.
The sun rises, the sun sets and most people will mark March 18th off their calender just as they have hundreds of days before.
Our house is unusually quiet today. We have things on our calender and appointments to keep and we have people to talk to.
But we will not be thinking of much else other than March 18, 2004.

I recall a horrible story from years ago about a family of 5 who were savagely beaten, raped and robbed in their home by a two escaped prisoners. The dad eventually killed the prisoners, but he buried the evil men in his back yard and instructed the family to never tell anyone what had happened in their home that night.
The next scene showed the family eating around the dinner table as if nothing unusual had happened. The children's faces were swollen and bruised, clothes were torn and on backwards, and all their eyes were red and hollow as they were forced to act as if the nightmare had never occurred. I was deeply disturbed by the cruelty of making the children suppress and deny what had only moments ago shattered their world.
The story fast forwarded to these children years later,..in deep and intense psychological therapy.

Four years later, my family is still reeling, and I wonder how much longer it will last. A lifetime? Maybe. Maybe not.
Jae, Taylore's and Alicia's accident impacted thousands, but thousands have moved on. It is appropriate that they do so.
Life indeed does go on.

However a few of us still sit at the dinner table, looking around at each other, staring at the empty chair, each other and wondering how this all happened. Unlike the disturbing story above, our table is filled with conversation that is full of love and will bring some healing, but the fact of the matter is: Jae Lynn will never be at the table again.

Jae Lynn lived here, was loved here and then was violently and brutally torn away from us. The life course and trajectory of our entire family has been forever altered by that one moment in time.
I have no energy to attempt the reasoning for it all.
I wouldn't accept anyone's reasoning anyway, except for God's, and He's not revealing it to me.

Some days are better than others.
Some days, we are even "good".
All of us have had "great days".
The good days finally and occasionally outnumber the bad ones,....For most of us anyway.

But March 18th will never be a good day.