I have gone through stacks of pictures today.....and this is the one that I keep coming back to as my favorite. It is the Matt I will always remember. The eternally joyful and positive young man.
In my mind Matt will always be 27, even though today he would be 40. So hard to believe. He will remain perpetually young and maybe that is a good thing. I have a feeling that even at 40 Matt would have retained that youthful attitude, the one that endeared him to so many.
After so many years of being sad and mournful on this day, I am spending this day being grateful for the fact we did have 27 years.
I served at a funeral last week. A young mother lost her four day old child. They knew the last few months she carried him that the prognosis was not good. He had a heart problem that they were not sure could be corrected. After four days of holding him and loving him they gave him back to God. I really cannot imagine. They never got to know him. Through pictures they will remember his face but they did not know him.
That was an awakening moment for me. I have come to grips with the reality that we lost our son. I have questioned it, I have had moments of anger, and I have truthfully wondered why some people seem to go through life seemingly with no hurdles in their path. Maybe I will never understand it all, but I am still feeling blessed. I have 27 years of incredible memories. I know who Matt was and I watched him develop into a young man I was very proud of. Yes, I am sure we tend to remember all of the good and forget those negatives as we eulogize someone who is no longer here, but in all honesty the bad was so minor. A 21 year old who bleached his hair as a "I am an "I am an adult now prank", or a college junior who got that darn tattoo that he knew would make me irate....MINOR!
I managed to find humor in both cases, though I only laughed about it behind his back!
A friend called to say they were thinking about our family today and mentioned that Matt surely would have had an incredible 40th birthday party....I prefer to think that he would have been grateful to come home to a house full of kids and a wife who would smoother him with hugs and presents because he had hit the big FOUR O! No matter what he did he would have done it with enthusiasm and joy because that was who he was....and because I knew who he was I am blessed.
Happy Birthday Son!
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