“He said, ‘They look hungry. Can we feed them?’ I paused because I really didn’t want my 4-year-old subjected to everything on the streets. He walked up and said, ‘Would you like a sandwich?’ At that point, I made the decision to do it once a week.”
‘Dad, what is homeless?’ I said, ‘It’s when you don’t have food to eat.’ I thought this would be the end of the conversation.’ Little boy’s inspiring cross-country journey to feed the homeless
‘Massive day at work today. We have our senior leadership meeting. I have to travel 5 hours by car and train. And what’s my wife doing? Not much really.’
“All she has to do is get two boys up, dressed and fed while breastfeeding the third.”
‘I woke up to hear him gasping. I thought, ‘Is this actually happening?’ As I watched my husband turn blue to gray, I cried to PLEASE not take him! I begged him not to leave me and the boys.’
“His exact words were, ‘People drinking these drinks are playing Russian Roulette with their lives.’ I was blown away. I couldn’t believe just one drink could do this damage.”
‘No Lucy, you can’t play with that zip!’ I try to release her grip from the zipper on my pants. A crowd of people are staring at the grown man with a 2-year-old grabbing furiously at his python.’
“My daughter is obsessed with zips at the moment. Legit obsessed. Given the level of peace and quiet this provides me, I’m fully supportive of this new interest. That was… until the other day. You see – I happened to be wearing shorts. Shorts with a zip up fly.”
‘Loving the girl who lost her father. This role isn’t for the faint of heart.’
“You adore a woman who will forever be a little girl who lost her daddy. The very first man who loved her is no longer hers to have.”
‘He was her strength, her protector, her everything – until he wasn’t. Nothing, absolutely nothing, prepared us for the affect it would have on Dad.’
“He started calling at 4 a.m. He was extremely agitated. Panicked. He told us we have to come get him – NOW! The father we know and love is almost unrecognizable to either of us.”
‘When I lost my father at 18, you were there. You didn’t force me to talk about my emotions. You shared your father with me when I no longer had one.’
“As young parents I would call you crying because the task of being an adult was too overwhelming. I didn’t feel like enough of a wife or mother. You were kind to irrational postpartum me.”
‘My daughter said, ‘There’s a light coming into the picture.’ It wasn’t just any light. This was a beam straight from HEAVEN itself.’
“This pregnancy has been exceptionally harder for me emotionally, knowing I won’t have any pictures of my dad holding this baby. I keep praying for him to show up in some way or another. And boy, did he.”
‘His dying wish was to be home. I never got to thank him for drying my tears when I was broken inside as a victim of bullying.’
“It’s the things I no longer remember that hurt so deeply. What it feels like to wrap my arms around his neck to hug him. I no longer remember the feeling of joy he brought me. Loving him feels like a lifetime ago.”
‘It’s 3 a.m. and you’d like a cookie? OKAY!’ It’s funny how my once-strict mother turned into the good witch from the Wizard of Oz, her tutu lined with snacks, the second her children were grown.
“I hear being a grandparent is the height of bliss. You get all of the benefits of enjoying children. You can spoil them rotten, discipline them rarely or not at all, and send them home to their parents as soon as you’re sick of watching Moana for the 82nd time this week. What’s not to love?”
