MY SPIRIT'S JOURNEY

This spirit was whispered into my cells that would grow and divide only to become who I was meant to be in nine months:  a healthy, soft, sweet smelling infant.  These blue eyes had awoke to bright lights, chaos and confusion, and there I survived for many years to come.  My spirit pushed through all that surrounded me to find what this life is all about. As a child I expected to find it in the form of a parent.  It was not long before my small mind realized that they certainly did not have what I needed.  As a toddler and life continued to change, my grandparents seemed a promising source of all that could nurture me.  This little spirit, try as it might, was losing strength and a will to continue this fight when the newest curve in this road of life would find me in a Catholic all-girl boarding school over the next six years.  There was not much of what I was searching for in those dorms or in their church.  There were many spirits just as hurt and broken as mine.  Every Friday night there would be weeping from the dorm rooms of those who did not go home.  It would be a weekend working with the nuns, cleaning and praying.  Yes.  Praying that someone would come to take us 'home' next weekend.  

The years went on and my reunions with my father became a sort of ritual.  He moved four hundred miles away and started a new family that he would live with, but I would be there during the summer months.  Those months would show me a new form of attention that a five year old can not understand.  It seemed so right to be with my Daddy, but then so wrong when he did what he did.  I would learn to look to boys and men for this certain something that I was searching for and then to things and money.  Soon I learned that one comes with the other.  It did fill something inside of me, but could this be all there was?  I knew in my heart that there was more.

My spirit forged on through many more years of horrors, until I married a young man when I was eighteen.  Of course, I would not find that 'thing' from him, but when we went to pick up our beautiful bundle of joy that we would eventually adopt as our own, I instantly felt what had been alluding me all of these years.  This overwhelming love that a parent is supposed to have for their child, along with a need to make him feel safe and secure, and yes, even happy!  There he was.  My spirit reached out to his spirit and we swore to take care of each other from that day until forever.  My life was on a new road.

My spirit was on a mission to find all the love that one could find in a lifetime, and there stood the most beautiful, kind and gentle man that ever walked the earth.  Our love grew into a magical family of five. As long as we were together there was lots of love, happiness and safety!  With each year our bonds became stronger.  Well, I thought that God had given me this unbelievable gift to even out my drastic childhood years,  We were married for thirty years before the devastating news came to me and our children that he had been killed in a horrific train accident and was left burnt, mangled and bleeding at the site while the others were being pulled to safety.  This spirit froze and for three years has walked through each day hoping to regain that part of me that he had authored over all those years.

Slowly, little by little, I believe that my spirit was melting and peeking at a familiar light.  And then, at the beginning of this year I went to my son's room just to find his lifeless eyes staring up at me.  My baby, my youngest child was dead!  Now, here I stand in the wake of all the casualties of my life with this very broken heart falling to my knees.It is again that I reach for that beautiful spirit in my son to give me strength to help me heal.