A little bit of "Heavens" brightened our day

It had been a rough week. My daughter wasn't feeling well and we had seen two doctors that day. The doctors wanted my 11-year-old daughter to have some blood work done, so we picked up my younger daughter from school and went up to the local lab to have her blood drawn.

As we entered the facility, a nice young lady who opened the door for us and said, "Hello," greeted us.  I had been to this lab before and never greeted like this.

At this particular facility, especially lately, the wait can be long, usually an hour if you don't have an appointment. On this particular day, even those with appointments had waited more than an hour. We weren't too thrilled to have to sit and wait, but we had to because the doctors needed the blood work done.

The waiting area of a lab isn't the place you usually meet people, but this day was different. Our greeter came up and started talking to me and my two girls. We knew she wasn't hired to greet people, she just wanted to do it out of the kindness of her heart. As people came in, she would rush over and open the door for them. After opening the door, she would come back and talk to us. She told us her name and we told her our names. She had a beautiful name, but what really stood out to me and my daughters was her middle name. It was "Heavens." You don't hear that every day.

She told us she was 27 years old.  She had quite a few brothers and sisters she named off to us. She also told us her parents were sitting right across from us waiting to do labs. She mentioned she was the manager at the local restaurant Harold Seltzer's. She was the "silverware manager." She wrapped the silverware once a week. She also told us she worked for the Tampa Bay Rays. Her job was to clean the countertops and fill  the ketchup and mustard at the concession stands.

As she spoke, you could hear in her voice  she took such pride in what she did. She mentioned had gotten married a few years ago. She loved her parents and told us they were her best friends. Toward the end of our conversation she told us "I have down Syndrome."

We knew she had Down Syndrome, but that didn't make a difference in who she was. She was such a delight and made our hour plus long wait seem  not so bad. Actually, we felt like we had been given a glimpse of heaven and were blessed that afternoon because she was such a lovely person.

After I thought about our day at the lab, I couldn't get out of my mind how wonderful this woman with down syndrome was and how she shined even with obstacles in her life. She was able to work, get married and was so content with what she had. I also thought about her parents and family and how they had given her such confidence and support. I was also impressed with the two companies, Harold Seltzer's and the Tampa Bay Rays, who employed her.

"Heavens" was just what we needed to brighten our day. If only we could all see life through her eyes.

Dealing with death at a young age

I remember when my kids were two and three years old and one of their first fish they had named “Brownie” died. The girls were so sad, especially my older daughter, Randi. She was actually sobbing. It was the first time something died. As parents of kids that age, we really couldn’t explain the concept of death.  We buried the fish and decided we would let them go to the pet store and pick out a new fish. I remembered some of my friends telling me they didn’t want to go through that experience and they would replace the fish if they saw it floating on top of the water.  Fish are easy to replace. Over the years, we have had other fish die and really it hasn’t been the tragedy it once was to them. The last fish that died there wasn’t a toilet bowl funeral or anything.

Over the past year several friends of our family have died, mostly older people. It is very sad, but their deaths have been expected because of illness. My girls, who are now 8 and 9, have gone with my husband and myself visiting them in the hospital or nursing home.  After the third person died this year, my youngest daughter said, “Mom I don’t want to visit anymore people because after I see them they die.”

I told her it wasn’t her and people sometimes get sick and sometimes it’s better so they don’t suffer and they go to a Heaven, which is a much better place.

My girls recently had to deal with the death of a younger person, a woman we became friends with over the summer who owned the local ceramics gallery and died suddenly. She was only 49 years old. It was something I wasn’t expecting let alone the girls. We found out about it and I knew I had to tell the girls because we had been going to the gallery and I felt it was important for them to know what happened. When I told them they began to cry and started asking questions. Questions that are hard for a parent to answer like, “Why does God allow good people to die. There are so many bad people out there and she was a good person.” “Do babies go to heaven if they die?”  I tried my best to answer and give them hope that when someone dies something good will come out of it and be for God’s glory. It’s just hard for anyone to think that especially when you are grieving for a loved one. Our friend had two children she left behind. I know they are missing their mom. It doesn’t matter how old you are when you lose someone close it still hurts.

I know as time goes by we will have many more deaths to deal with. I think about so many people including members in my own family who have lost their parents, grandparents, children and close friends. It’s never an easy thing to deal with. I know that we have to make sure we keep an open line of communication so our children can ask us questions and express their grief. It helps to heal the hurt. Knowing how much your child can handle when talking about death is important  too.

As a parent, I want to do everything I can to make that hurt go away, sometimes we just can’t do that. Even though death isn’t a subject that many of us want to talk about it is inevitable.