Unusual for a Authors Post

Today would have marked my youngest child's 16th birthday; it would have also had my father-In-laws birthday. To show that I am human and not all business I am honoring them today. Today would have been their day of celebration here on earth, instead they at celebrating in heaven. I can only imagine. I'm not sure what sex my child is as they were miscarried and way too early to know. For years I have given him the name Matthew Robert as it is the only name I had picked out at the time. Sara Elizabeth was yet another, but Matthew was the first on my list. My father-in-law would have been thrilled as he loved the grandchildren.

     My father-in-law passed away somewhere around 24 years ago as my son was close to 2 years old when he left this earth, and he will soon be 27 years old. He battled a cancerous brain tumor for two years before it took him. Although he didn't appear to know us the last few months of his life, he was with us. He had big plans for retirement that he would never see. He wanted a workshop so that he could work with wood, build things and just enjoy his retirement.

      Our child never took its first breath on this side of heaven and sometimes that 's hard to understand, it particularly difficult when I think that God allowed us no other children of our own. Now in my fifty's I still feel the loss and see empty chairs that should have been filled. Over the past years and months, I have lost a grandfather on my father's side that was indeed a good man. My grandmother on my dad's side who had worked hard all of her life is now gone. My step grandfather on my mother's side in which was the only grandfather I knew on her side as my biological grandfather passed away two years before my birth then his widow, my 99-year grandmother who would have celebrated her 100th birthday within weeks of her passing.

    Life is fleeting, and we need to enjoy each minute of it. The longer we live here on the Earth in which God has given us, the more of our family seem to be on the other side. It is something I have thought about since my grandmothers passing. She had more waiting for her in heaven than she did here. All of her brothers and sisters except two are gone. She survived two husbands and two children, her parents and a three brothers-in-laws and three sisters-in-laws, (maybe more) and several nieces, nephews and cousins.

     Celebrating their lives isn't just today for my son's birthday, and my father-in-laws birthdays, we will celebrate them again memorial day and as long as we live on this side of paradise.