Anniversary

Today is the first year anniversary of my girl Carrie Viv's death. (Please click on that link and read all of the backtracked pink links.) I'm not sure exactly how I feel about it. I've tried to play it off up to this point, like it's not that big of a deal - it's just 365 days without her. Yesterday it was 364. The day before that was 363 days, and the day before that....you get my drift? It's officially a year since God had mercy on her. But I feel like I lost her before she died so why is the date of her death such an impact? It's starting to bother me. So, there's that. And here I am, weepy, like I've just watched that darn Folger's Christmas commercial when Bobby comes home. Darn you Bobby! I'm weepy. What's with all this weirdness like feelings and stuff? Welcome day 365.

It's one thing to lose a friend who is like a sister to you, it's another to lose someone who is your age. Something just hits home - that mortality is reality.

I went to a camp every summer called UM-ARMY. (HOLLA! All my peeps out there!) UM-ARMY was a church camp where we'd go to a town and camp out at the local church, and go work on much less fortunate people's houses by day, then do church campy stuff like hot-potato races, water balloon fights, and then prayer. You know, cool stuff like that. I've scraped and painted houses, helped tape and float walls and ceilings, plumbing one time - that was a doozy - wheelchair ramps, rebuilt porches, and fixed large holes in homes the state would not permit people living in.

Every morning we'd wake up and get in our groups, get our assignments and go. This one house we went to, the directions were literally, "Continue on the dirt road to the dirt path. Turn left at the Oak tree. Go straight down the path until you can squint your eyes to see the house on the left. You'll know it because of the rotten porch. Knock loud, Mr. and Mrs. Harvey are hard of hearing."

So, we found the place, and we knocked and knocked. You can imagine we must have been loud enough what with our raging teenage-church-campyness and all, and just having me in the group. Finally, someone came to the door. We'd woken them up. Mr. and Mrs. Harvey were startled at first, but once we explained, they let us in and asked us to pray with them. You never know what to expect in this situation, but that's the adventure, right? All I remember in all my visits to all of these homes was Mr. Harvey's prayer, "We thank you Jesus, for sending us these angels to wake us up to see another day."

I've been an eager early riser since then. My dad would have told you different that indeed, I don't wake up early enough. But I do. And I wake up alert, ready to go, and annoyingly (as vented by some in the past - you know who you are) perky and thank God for these angels (usually Lucy, but sometimes Max and as of late, Farley the wonderdog) who wake me up to see another day with them.

I suppose that's one thing I've known and felt since Carrie got sick. A new appreciation of life. It's the last of many gifts she left me - the reality of how precious my life is. I think I'll celebrate that today.

That's how I roll.