One Day More

Sometimes, there are no words.
How do I explain what happened to my child? All the bright promise of their birth gone in the blink of an eye leaving me here to try and tell you how, despite everything, how very much this child was loved...

Audrey N. came into the world, a healthy baby who was, in all respects, perfectly "normal".

All of that changed shortly after her first birthday when a contaminated polio vaccine plunged Audrey and her family into a world of fear and confusion. The fear abated and became a deep seated sorrow; sorrow for the life that had been and for the way it had become.

And yet, there was still love. Still some laughter scattered amid the tears. This was a family who loved their daughter very much and miss her still to this day.

Life is not fair. Not all of us get the golden haired wonder child to brag about in Christmas newsletters. Not all of us get the child to be proud of...

Sometimes parents of special needs children and adults think that they can't do any sort of tribute to their child. After all, they say, my child never went to school, never ran a race, never won a prize, went to a dance...not like the others anyway.

And then there's the parents of the child lost to drugs, booze and pills . Maybe their pride and joy ended his or her days in a prision cell. Should they be denied the right to grieve and say,

"Here was my child!"?

The tribute for Audrey N. addresses the bitter and the sweet of her brief life head on, no excuses, no sugar coating. No, sometimes her life was not good. But she loved and was loved.

The poem at the end was written by Audrey's Mother in her honor for this, her special day, the day of her freedom from her body and from this earth.