In The Blink Of An Eye

Any Way The Wind Blows

After the day that Brayden committed suicide, something inside of me changed. I had seen before how quickly life can end and how quickly people you love can be taken away from you. As you remember there was a time in my life where I had stopped believing in God and hated thinking about the afterlife or what happens when we die. My answer was always "Nothing, nothing happens. We leave the people we love and it's the end of our pain but the continuation of theirs." Just the other day I was actually thinking about something, something I hadn't thought about in a very long time.

When Silas "died", I'm using quotation marks because as we all know he didn't really die. Just like my mom or dad, hell maybe even Evan. Anyways...where was I going with this?

Oh yeah, so when Silas died and I went to his grave, I felt him. I felt his presence there and I felt the whispers of his voice within the wind. In that moment, it was something that gave me peace during a very difficult time. But he wasn't dead! So how and why, right? Why did I feel him if he wasn't even dead? How did I hear his voice when he was alive the entire time? The same exact thing happened with Evan, and with my mom and dad. I felt every single one of them at some point or another. I felt their presence, their smell, I heard their voices and even felt their hands on mine.

The truth is I don't know what happens when we die, maybe nobody does. There are so many possibilities and so many different views on life and life after death depending on religion, country, your personal views and beliefs and even if you believe in God or not.

Maybe we won't ever find out what truly happens until we experience that part of life ourselves. It's bound to happen, right? Whoever is born will die one day. Some die at a very old age in their sleep and others a few hours after birth. I don't know why God calls us back home at different times and in different ways, maybe that's something we aren't supposed to understand just yet. All I know from personal experience is that our minds and bodies allow us to experience something that is beyond wonderful when we lose someone we love. The pain, the loss, the grief, it's all something way too hard to handle. It becomes this part of you that never goes away no matter how much time passes by. It's a type of pain that you eventually learn to live with. In order to make the process of losing someone we love more bearable, our minds allow us to see and feel things which might not be there. I'm sure that when someone you love dies, there are ways they are able to surround us and make our grieving process a little less painful by giving us signs that they are still around. However, I also think that the vast majority of that comes from within us. It is our own brain and intuitive response to losing the people we care about.

The wind you feel in your hair and upon your skin, the whispers of their voices that echo through your mind, the smell of their perfume or cologne that lingers on even after they are gone, the way someone laughs which reminds you of the person you lost, or even the sole feeling that they are there with you is all something that helps us hurt a little less and grieve a little more.

Regardless of why or how it happens, it is something that is pure magic and incredible.

When I said that something inside of me changed the day that Brayden died, I mean that I no longer wanted to spend time or energy on things that weren't important in my life. Life was way too short to get caught up in things that took away from that short amount of time we had to spend on earth and with our loved ones. The days go by way too quickly and the months and years come rolling by and before we know it it's been years and the only thing you have left is the memories that you can look back on.

Over the past years I have spent way too much time focused on things that didn't matter. I was so caught up in the fear, the stress, the nightmares, the pain and the suffering that I forgot to look at all the beautiful things that were happening around me. I took everything for granted!!!