NO MATTER HOW LIFE HAS BEEN...

NO MATTER HOW BAD LIFE HAS BEEN...  

BY GLORIA FAYE BROWN BATES

DIAMOND TEARDROPS

Diamond teardrops dancing in the rain

sparkling, shining to hide my pain

colorful rainbows in the sky

distract me so that I don't cry

I loved my child with my heart

Tommy, I'm so sorry life pulled us apart

My son, my heart, my child

I love you. Your 'Ole' Mom

BY GLORIA FAYE BROWN BATES

1-29-12

I woke up thinking about this little 'poem' I wrote yesterday as I wrote 'THE FACE OF A GRIEVING MOTHER'.

I love diamonds, tears remind me of diamonds. Have you ever cried (I know you have) and your tears catch the light... as you cry you see little sparkles of shining colors shoot out from your tears?

I have cried, I have seen the colors shoot out from my tears, shining and bright. I wonder if one could interpret those colors as 'healing power'?

I remember times when I have cried, colors in my tears have caught my attention. For instance, when one night we were driving in the snow to the hospital... my cousin had just died.

Tears were falling down my cheeks, my eyes were watching the soft, quiet snow coming down. The headlights were shining on a white road ahead of us... I was looking at that when I began to see my tears between me and the headlights.

How they sparkled with color, with clarity! Diamonds made of my tears, colors of the rainbow in my tears. This distracted me from crying as I opened and closed my eyes, my lashes wet with tears. How my lashes sparkled in the reflection of the headlights.

I could see snowflakes traveling toward the windshield, my sparkling eyelashes framed this beautiful sight. Even in grief I could appreciate such beauty... God's beauty. Captured in a frame of diamond tears and rainbow colors.

I was thinking that my cousin, Jimmy, would have wanted at least something ... just something to mark the time he left this world. Jimmy, it did.... we had the softest snowfall that night... unusual as we don't always get snow in the winter here. You would have smiled knowing 'something special' happened at the time you went away... something that makes me always remember when you left this world.

That night I framed the picture in my mind forever, of that soft, beautiful snow, snowflakes in the headlights, snowflakes falling quietly against the windshield. Diamonds made of teardrops, just as for my son, Tommy... whom you loved very much. Diamonds of such clarity, little rainbows of color. Crying....

I would be wealthy if I were paid for all the diamonds I have cried in my entire life. I have had the saddest life, yet... I've had the happiest life. I forgot the sad when I was happy. I've lost many, many people I loved dearly in my life.

I was hurt deeply each time one of them died... hurt badly when I, myself, was at death's door.. never knowing until a year later that one of my most favorite aunts died. Even if I'd known, I wouldn't have known ... I was that sick for so long. I was in the battle of my life.

Patsy... my Aunt Patsy. You died when I was so ill, I never knew. I remember you with my words here. You were another person in my very young life who cared for me, just as my Aunt Frankie.

You had that soft voice that was clear in the darkness of my mind, I could 'see' what you told me. Only one thing you promised me, you couldn't be here to make come true. You meant to be... you promised me from the time I was very little into adulthood. I understand life is like that... not all promises can be kept... sometimes we go away before we can keep them.

I love you, Patsy. It's a wonder I didn't see you somewhere as I battled for life.... I was 'out there' too. It's a wonder I didn't meet you out there, just to reach out and touch your hand in hello, goodbye, I love you. At least ...... something.

I can write on, fill up a sheet of notebook paper with all the names of loved ones ... ones 'I truly loved in my life' ... who have died through the past 12 years. It seems all my life I was never around death... until just after I won my battle to live. Since then, I've seen so much grief.

So much has happened in mine and Skip's life. He was in two very bad wrecks, one being in a tractor-trailer wreck in Moriarity, New Mexico. Traveling on Interstate 40 West, it was raining and two young girls were traveling too fast on the wet road, they hydroplaned hitting the steering tire on the big truck Skip was driving.

It sent him flying through the median, across oncoming traffic on the opposite side of the interstate. The big truck hit and broke down a Shoney's billboard, landing out on the desert floor. Skip was hanging upside down, hurt. He heard some men coming, one saying 'I wonder if that truck driver is dead?' Skip yelled at them to please help him, he wasn't dead at all!

A woman ran a stop sign hitting him in the side..... only two weeks after the tractor-trailer wreck. Her van turned upside down in the middle of the road, she was lucky to have lived. Skip and my mother's husband were so lucky to have survived that wreck.

Skip was almost got broadsided a couple more weeks later.... when cops were chasing a bank robber! The bank robber barely missed Skip as he almost went through the stoplight as it changed. Skip was on the way to physical therapy. How ironic is that? The bank robber went under that light and crashed only yards away from Skip.

Skip was beginning to be very sick as he took care of me when I was ill. How he worked, and took care of me, carried me to all those treatments, tests... no one could understand. I know how, because I am like him... love, pure love. We love each other that much.

He was losing so much blood. If someone, or even you... ever lose blood when you go to the bathroom... from the rectum...... go running to the doctor. Skip didn't because he was fighting so hard to keep his world together... a deathly sick wife, his dogs he loved very much, working... he was taking care of them all, including his wife's cousin who'd come to live with them.

Skip was under so much pressure, he was so sick. I was so sick, I became aware of how sick he was... I pushed so hard to get 'well enough'... to force him to go to the doctor. Thank-God, I did.

When Skip went to the hospital for surgery... they had to give him alot of blood before they could even do surgery. I was still very sick, but... I took care of him just as he had me for three years.

We were both sick together. No one knew, and if they did... no one came around. We never told many people, we kept alot from Tommy, who was driving long-distanced then. We've went through so much..... alone.

I went into congested heart failure. The drug adriamycin damaged my heart from all chemotherapy treatments I had. The doctor didn't tell me this until long after.... it was my tradeoff for living... I accepted that ...gladly. :)))

These are a few things I've 'looked back on'.... this morning. I have so much to be thankful for. I am, from the very deepest of my heart. Believe it or not... these are only 'just a few things'... we have experienced in this lifetime. Isn't it really... amazing? I am amazed when I sit from time to time 'to look back'.

No matter how bad life has been.... it's been good, too. I'm so thankful to be past 'so much bad'. I look forward to the good things in life... I will embrace each, appreciating more than ever the happy things. At this age ..I have never appreciated so much. I have never in my life to 'not' take things for granted, as I do now. Never will I do that again. Isn't it amazing how we learn and grow through the years... just to find this out? I'm amazed... all the time!

These are my thoughts this morning... I wonder what your thoughts are this morning? :)))