Keep On Keeping On

These days...

Heart feeling heavy, chest and throat tightening, eyes watering, followed by feelings of complete desperation, and finally feeling like I can't breathe...all over again...as the memories  of three years ago come flooding in.

But I push through the pain, I push through the emptiness, I push through the tears....and I remind myself yet again (because I need constant reminders, especially days like this) that "despite all these things, overwhelming victory is mine through Christ, who loves me" Romans 8:37

Honestly, I don't feel victorious, let alone "overwhelmingly victorious" but I know I can't rely on my emotions but rather on His promises.  I know that while I may not feel victorious, He has already won my battles! So, I cling to a promise spoken to me years ago as I cried over Israel's grave "I tell you again indeed, you will walk the streets of gold, enter my Kingdom and see your child again"...When I do, I will dance in the heavens with my little boy while we worship our Creator together.  

In the meantime, I will keep living life to the fullest.  I will keep loving fiercely.  I will keep forgiving.  I will keep smiling.  I will keep dancing.  I will keep singing my 80's songs.  I will keep trying new things.  I will keep my head up.  I will keep mixing up my words when I speak.  I will keep being bolder.  I will keep drinking coffee,  and keep on keeping on, doing all the other stuff you'll never get a chance to do....

Loving you my sweet boy is one of the easiest things I've ever done; but loving you from afar – by far has been the hardest...

"I miss you, miss you so bad
I don't forget you, oh it's so sad
I hope you can hear me,

I remember it clearly, The day you slipped away
Was the day I found it won't be the same" -A. Lavigne

To say this journey has been extremely difficult, is an understatement.  Yet, God has been relentless and has not let me wallow up in sorrows. What I find amazing and extremely humbling about this is to learn how others have been affected by this experience and blog.  What was meant  to cause harm, God has used it for the good....I said from the beginning, if one life would be impacted by this experience and serve a purpose then Glory to God.  The following are the words of my daughter Erika.   The beauty I find here is not that she writes about me, but rather that I see the evidence of her dependence on  God in her life.  I was touched immensely that she would share this with her class, 3 months ago.  Thank you God for your strength and love that is continuously getting us through this journey. 

A Mother’s Smile

When someone speaks of inner strength and goodness in the midst of difficult circumstances, the person that instantly comes to mind is my mother. Through the death of my brother, Israel Mark Plaza, her greatest qualities were displayed, proving to everyone around her that she is a woman of great emotional fortitude.

On a cold foggy day in December of 2012, my younger sister and I sat on a booth at First Peek Ultrasound in Oak Brook, Illinois. My numb hands were interlocked with one another, and I stared blankly at them in confusion. I twiddled my rough thumbs as I spoke softly to her.

“I don’t know what’s going on with mom and the baby... but we have to just pray about it, okay? You have to remember that everything happens for a reason...” I paused. “I just have this really bad feeling about the baby...” She turned her head up to look at me, she had the eyes of a solemn, stray deer in a forest of anguish. 

She interlocked her hands as well, and we both bowed our heads to pray to a God that probably wasn’t even listening. She began. “God, I don’t know where you are but I pray that everything is okay with my mom and the baby, because I love them and I don’t want them to be hurt.” A tear began to form at the corner of my right eye. I was scared to blink because I didn’t want the unwanted mix of salt and sadness to make her even more anxious than she already was.

We had just been kicked out of my mother’s ultrasound room. We were going to find out the sex of the small pea-sized blob in her whom. My mother’s pregnancy was an accidental surprise. My younger brother, Matthew, wasn’t even a year old yet. At first, we were scared for the arrival of this baby considering the fact that my mother was older now; more complications could take place with the pregnancy due to her age. However, we learned to feel happier knowing that we’d have yet another new addition to our growing family.

When we entered through the doors of First Peek, we immediately started making bets. “It’s a boy, I just KNOW it!” my father exclaimed.“No, it’s definitely a girl!” Krystal retorted. “I think so too Krys,” my mother laughed, rubbing her small round stomach. “Well I agree with dad!” I smirked. “It’s totally a boy, I can feel it in my soul.”

After meeting with the nurses at First Peek, we waited around the couches until we were called back into a room. It was dark and cold. The couches were stiff and uncomfortably itchy. I scratched my arms with the stubble I had for nails. The nurse’s smile was a bright cheery sun shining on the cold world of the ultrasound room; it made us anxious to find out the gender of the baby.

As the nurses had my mother situated, my dad began to pace nervously around the room, back and forth. Back and forth. Krystal and I waited patiently on the couches at the corner of the room. Our eyes scanned the monitor on the wall for anything that might’ve resembled a baby. I looked back at my mother, and she gave me a weak smile as the nurse prodded around the surface of her stomach. Again, our eyes plastered the screen.

“I told you it was a boy!” my father exclaimed. The small chuckles that crept from his lips displayed his joy.  “Aw man!” my sister said. “I really wanted to have a little sister!” “Get them out...” I heard my mother mumble. My father didn’t seem to hear her as he kept gazing at the screen, stuck in a daze. I had heard her though. Everything seemed to be happening all at once. Vivid images of my mother burying her face into her palm, my father snapping out of his trance-like state, and being rushed out of that ultrasound room still haunt every crease of my brain.

I couldn’t hold back the tear any longer. The knot in my throat was a violent, drunken man at a bar who just wanted something to hit. Krystal’s quiet, innocent prayer was interrupted by the jolt of the ultrasound room door. I had never seen my father look so old. His light, euphoric eyes were now a sad, meaningless color in between brown and gray. The crinkles around his eyes seemed to cave into his aged face like craters on the cold, dark moon. He waved us in with his callused but gentle hands. The nurse stood in a shocked position. But all I really cared about in that moment was my mother.

I peered over and looked around so many different bodies, just trying to catch a glimpse of hers. I could see her struggling to get herself off of the ultrasound bed and clean the ultrasound gel off of her stomach with a towel. I really didn’t understand what was going on; everyone was so quiet. Anonymous sniffles echoed through the room. My mother hobbled over to us. Suddenly, a random, chilling scream escaped her lips and tears spilled from her eyes like a flood.  The ...the...” she sputtered. My instincts reached me and all at once, I was holding her. “The baby’s gone...” she sobbed. At that moment in time, I felt as if I were her mother, and she was my child. I held her tightly in my arms and gently caressed the back of her head with my fingers. As I rubbed her back, curling my pinky into her hair, I felt her shudder repeatedly into my shoulder. I shushed her heart-jerking cries and tried to calm her down. My father, Matthew, and Krystal huddled around us, enclosing us in a hug. I wish that hug lasted forever. It was the one place I knew she felt safe. Invincible, even.

The nurse encouraged us to head to the ER as soon as possible. Everything else was a blur, really. The drive to the hospital was just as cold and dark as the feelings we all felt on the inside. The doctors at the hospital pulled my mother away in a wheelchair. My brother, Israel Mark Plaza, would’ve entered our lives on May 15, 2013. I can’t extract every detail from his “birth”, simply because I wasn’t present for most of it. My mother went on later to describe her feelings to me. When I went to give birth to him, I really didn’t want to. I knew that once they cut the umbilical cord from him, it’d be the last true connection I’d have with my baby boy.”

Through the sudden, unfair death of my brother, I learned that my mother was a lot stronger than she had ever claimed to be. We all agree that though Israel never spoke physical words, his life told us of a beautiful woman’s strength in the midst of terrible circumstances. Over the past couple of years, we have watched her deal with Israel’s death in her own way; a way in which her love, goodness, and grace have never left her. She continues to nurture us and has never stopped laughing at the simplest of things. She still cracks jokes and sings deafening versions of songs from the 80s... But most importantly, my mother never stopped displaying her love. In fact, she holds us a little bit tighter and gives us a few more kisses each night because she knows loss and has been able to overcome it with a smile on her face; if I were to become half the woman she is, I would be blessed.

“A time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance.” -Ecclesiastes 3:2-4