Monthly Archives: April 2016
For a period of time after Kalei’s death, grief took control of the part of my brain that normally generates a positive emotional state. Feelings such as joy, humor, happiness, etc. ceased to exist. As a result, my body was not able to produce the sound of laughter. I did not fully appreciate this (or even noticed it was gone for that matter) aspect of my grieving journey for several years. In the beginning I did not care about how my lack 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…..
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