In the previous two posts I talked about the importance of saying the names of the dead and giving the gift of listening to survivors. I am closing out this series by discussing the wrongness of saying “you were lucky” to survivors of horrific events. Whether the person involved walked away unscathed or sustained horrific injuries, we seem to want to assign their survival to luck or chance. Is mankind (or womankind) really that shallow, thoughtless or afraid to think about death long…..
Two unimaginable events taught me how important it was to let the survivors of those events tell their story. Just like I did, they too need to tell and re-tell their experience in order to learn how to turn their unimaginable experience into an imaginable one. One boy survived the crash that killed Kalei. A couple of months after her death one of his friends phoned me and said, “Lorene, are you mad at Jared?” “Of course not” I replied,…..
Last weekend I celebrated my first book signing at the Briercrest and District museum…how cool is that? Me? An Author! Not only was this a very unique experience on its own, but I was fortunate enough to be allowed to sign my books in the heritage cottage dedicated to a successful local Canadian poet, Edna Jacques. Edna had her first poem published at the age of 14 and became an internationally known writer and speaker. Many of her poems…..
My Introduction to Hiking – A Lifetime Ahead Story
The hard physical work of raising cattle and working on a grain farm — well into my adult years — kept me active and physically fit. Even in my youth, outside of participating in every sport available in our rural community, the thought of exercising just for the sake of it never entered my mind because at the end of each day my body was tired…I did not need to do crunches or yoga or hike for miles on top of…..
“My name is Sandra Alley and I asked my good friend Lorene if I could guest blog once as I think that’s all I could manage! Writing this was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. I found myself going back to High School English class. Well, here goes… Our son Jarrett John Alley died unexpectedly of a brain aneurysm on December 14th, 1997 at the tender age of 13 years. Our lives — my husband, daughter Lauren’s and mine — would never ever be the same. Not only did our lives change but also the lives of Jarrett’s friends. What happens to his friends? Do we…..
Every now and then someone will say to me, “When you wrote and published Forever Kalei’s Mom, you took something bad — her death — and turned it into something good.” While I might not totally subscribe to the accuracy of that statement (it implies a conscious plan, and the book was anything but that), I appreciate the meaning behind their words. For me, the something of value (sorry, I just can’t use good) comes from the sum of three things: Kalei’s life, her death and the grief…..
In the months following Kalei’s death, I sorted through every photograph and DVD (the digital era was just getting started and new technology was still expensive) I owned. Picture after picture, I separated the ones that included her from the ones that did not. Anything taken prior to January 23, 1985 was deemed unimportant and discarded. I thought I threw out pretty much every image that documented my life prior to her birth, but for reasons I can only guess at now, a few stragglers managed to survive the purge. I am…..
I keep telling myself, “Lorene, don’t worry about your A Lifetime Ahead journey — the worst has already happened, it can only get easier from here on in!” Or, “You have already used up the sucks-to-be-me quota given to you for this life so it should be easier going forward.” Apparently I was wrong, at least on the latter. My new dating venture sure is proof of that! Yes, maybe my expectations of the online dating process was a tad unrealistic…ALL RIGHT ALREADY…extremely unrealistic, but sheesh, how…..
Prior to Kalei’s death I used to have a pretty trusting nature. I worked off the theory that if I did not lie, cheat or steal from my fellow man, they would provide me the same courtesy – I could trust them and they could trust me. While I learned some caution as I got older, generally it seemed like a reasonable model to live by. The same goes for trusting the strength of the circle of life. I figured as long as…..
The morning of January 23rd my friend Angela called to say she wanted to wish Kalei a happy birthday ‘in person’. She asked me I would drive out to the cemetery with her. As I had nothing planned until the evening, I replied, “Sure, I would love to take you! What time should I pick you up?” As we chatted about logistics, I realized this day might actually be the right time to deal with a crazy need-thought that had been nagging at me for the past month. For some reason,…..
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