Ashton ~ January 2014 ~ Canning applesauce

“Remember him with me. Invite him to the table this year too. I need to know that you remember he lived. Share his stories, his memory, his life, his love. And if you’re open to blessing my aching heart even more, I invite you to SAY his name out loud with me.  Often. And without hesitation. To hear his name is to hear the most beautiful sound there is. May it always be on the tip of your tongue like it is on mine. There is no greater gift.”  by Angela Miller ~ stillstandingmag.com  ~ Thanksgiving 2013

I have to tell you…. this project is one or the best decisions I have made. I can’t begin to write how it has changed my whole outlook. It has diminished my grief and changed how I view life right now.  I am actually looking forward to this Christmas season. I am grateful… so grateful for that.

I want to tell you some of my findings so far. Here goes!!

You will see as my reports unfold that I have taken a lot of pictures of the word JOY. That has been so fun! People probably wonder what the heck I’m doing! Just for the record….Target has more JOY than Walmart and Costco has none whatsoever!!!  :o)

1. I went on a trip at the beginning of November to Phoenix with my 2 daughters and my mother to a conference called Time Out for Women. It is hard to get together with children and schedules, but we did it and it was a JOY to be with them for 2 whole days. While at the conference I heard truth that sunk deep into my heart telling me that I am important to my Heavenly Father and I felt very strongly that I need to keep writing. On the way home, I got to hear my mother and daughter, Candace, conversing in the front seat, solving the world’s family history problems and Candace asking questions, learning about my mother’s childhood. I don’t believe they have ever had a conversation like that before. It was pure JOY to watch and hear them bonding.

2. We have a Family Mission Statement that we worked quite diligently on one year when the kids were younger and all at home. We wrote down what was important to us and what we wanted to accomplish as a family while on this earth together. We used to read it together almost every week at our family council meeting. We don’t do that as much any more now that that kids have left home but Carter got it out and we read it, just he and I. It brought JOYFUL tears to read through it again. We did a good thing, writing that together.

3. I am so grateful for my church family. They bring me so much JOY. I came home one Sunday from church with a special love in my heart for all of them. There’s something about worshiping with a group of people that bonds us together.

4. Not sure how to put this one…. guess I’ll just say it outright…..reconciliation with someone where we have had mutual hard feelings  has been so liberating and JOYFUL for me. I can’t tell you how that has lifted me and helped me see the love God has for all people. We are all loved children of our Heavenly Father. He loves everyone just the same as He loves me.

5. I usually sing at a Community Christmas Celebration held in our area, and we start practicing in the middle of November. It’s not my turn to sing this year; it’s my turn to listen. So…I went to one of the practices to sit and listen with my mother who handles the music and I really listened. I was able to feel why singing brings me so much JOY and really heard the beautiful Christmas music. I heard in my heart the reason we sing. I think it’s the music of Christmas that is my favorite thing about Christmas. If I would have been up there singing like I usually am, I don’t think I could have felt that. Thank you, Heavenly Father, for sending Your Son, so we can sing about Him and his great JOY-filled gift during Christmas.

6. Have you ever looked at the pictures on Bing, the web browser?  Every day is a different picture and every picture is amazing and beautiful!! Now that we write and have this blog, I am on the computer more than I used to be and Bing makes it a nicer place to be. I can truly say… it brings me JOY!  Go look… www.bing.com

Are you searching for JOY along with me? What have you found? I would love to hear about it! You can leave comments on the blog or Facebook page. Send me pictures! Thanks a bunch to those who have sent me your JOY! I love it!

Written by Faye

Ashton ~ age 10

I am learning…. wow…. am I ever learning! I seem to have new eyes and new ears. Not to see the same way I’ve been seeing or hear the same way I’ve been hearing like all human bodies see and hear.  It’s different. I’m learning to see and hear with my heart. I see and hear more in an eternal perspective. It’s hard for me to describe but I will try…

What started these thoughts is a song. Music speaks to me sometimes in ways that nothing else can. I heard this song last month but it did not resonate like it did last week when I heard it again. Maybe my heart was ready this time.

It’s called, “If I Listen With My Heart” by Sally DeFord. It’s written from a child’s perspective.

This song put words to what has been happening with me since Ashton died. I have needed to feel near to my heavenly home. I have really needed that. I believe my heart still knows and remembers what it feels like in my heavenly home. It is a HUGE comfort for me to realize that. I don’t know how it works, but I feel that I still have a part of that heavenly home in my heart.

The chorus of this song also makes me think of listening for truth. Really, that’s how we have to listen for truth and for the Holy Spirit…with our heart, not our head or ears. That’s how we really ‘hear’!

The hope I feel that I will see Ashton again and that he is safe and happy comes from God through my heart.  My heart is not just an organ that is vital to my earthly existence. It is the part of me that helps me feel when something is right and good and helps me know when I hear truth. It helps me know that I can make it through this life if I let God guide me… His way.

I just have to listen with my heart to hear Him.

I had an epiphany in Target today. All the Christmas stuff was out. I’m not ready for that. Ashton won’t be here. How can we ever have Thanksgiving & Christmas without Ashton here?  I went and looked anyway. I saw a mug with the word Joy on it. There were ornaments with Joy on them. Wrapping paper, gift bags, decorations….  the word Joy was everywhere. That’s when it hit me!

 As usual, I couldn’t wait to get back home and write about it. I was on fire!

This holiday season, I want to look for Joy… I want to be bombarded with it….I want to bathe in it. I want to find it every where I go. I am going to deliberately look for it in whatever I do and whatever I see. I will report on it. I’ll write it down. I’ll take pictures of it!

Would you like to help me? You are welcome to help me look. Send me all the Joy you can find too if you’d like!  Bombard me with Joy!  You can comment on the blog or Facebook, message me, email me or send it snail mail. Message me… Faye Richardson Mayberry… for those addresses.

“Man is that he might have Joy.” That’s what my Heavenly Father wants for me and, by golly!!!!!   (that’s my new word, I’m stompin’ my foot),  I’m going to find it… I’m going to have it!

I Am!

PS – It’s the WORD Joy that started all this, but I realize that Joy means different things to different people. I’m anxious to see what your Joy looks  like!   Stay tuned for my Joy reports!!!

Written by Faye  ~  November 5th, 2014

Ashton ~ age 7 with brother Jacob

I was at an appointment today where a Beverly Hillbillies rerun was showing. I watched it til the end where they wave and wave and keep waving. Can you picture that? It brought back one of the funnest memories of a 7 year old boy, standing out on the porch waving to his dad as he drove off to work or anyone in the family who was driving away from the house. He would wave and wave and keep waving happily until the car was out of sight, just like at the end of the Beverly Hillbillies show. I can’t keep a smile off my face as I picture that. Wish we had a picture of it. We don’t…. but the memory is so vivid and real and sweet, I can see him out on that porch it as if it happened yesterday. He was a happy boy then.

Sometimes, at the beginning of this journey, I felt close to Ashton and could feel him near. Now, he seems so far away, unreachable…. like in the picture at the top of the blog… where he’s sitting on a far away volcanic rock in Fiji by the sea. The place that he loved. I chose that picture for the blog because it’s beautiful, it’s Fiji,  and because it typifies our relationship with him now. We don’t have tangible access to him anymore. He is off in the distance…so far away. Yes, unreachable… but because he was so much a part of our life for 21 years, his influence is still here, somehow. We can picture him, and, at times, feel his influence….but he’s not with us anymore. I know his spirit lives on in another realm and we will see and know him again. I believe that.

It leads me to ponder on my relationship with my Heavenly Father. I can’t see him, or physically touch him, but I know he’s there, somehow. I feel his influence in my life. I feel that love He has for me as I experience the deep, absorbing, love-filled grief for Ashton. I see and feel His love in my family relationships and friendships. He is not here on earth with me, but He is large and living… in His realm. I believe that.

I’ve heard this recited at many funerals, quite often by my husband. He and I had no idea it would mean so much to us so soon in our life.

Gone From My Sight

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.

Then someone at my side says: “There, she is gone!”

“Gone where?”

Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side and she is just as able to bear the load of living freight to her destined port.

Her diminished size is in me not in her. And just at the moment when someone at my side says: “There, she is gone!” There are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout: “Here she comes!”

And such is dying.   ~   Henry Van Dyke

I love the thought that other eyes, of those who love him,  were there watching Ashton come. I love the thought of other voices, shouting and happy, for his arrival. Maybe he turned back and waved and waved and waved….one last time to us…. at his arrival there. I love that thought too.

Written by Faye

Ashton ~ Senior Picture

Though I really try to look for and feel God’s light in my life, sometimes in my grief, it’s not there all the time. I do have moments, afternoons and blocks of time where it’s hard to see and feel that light.  I am grateful for the harder times in my life that have taught me to look for light. It is a blessing to me now… now that I am experiencing THE hardest time in my life…that I am already in the habit.

I saw some ‘light’ the other day coming back home from my walk.

We usually have zinnias that come up in our planters every summer. All I have to do is turn on the watering system and they grow. Easy. They reseed themselves every year. Easy… I love easy. Well… I didn’t even turn on the watering system this year. All I had to do was walk out and turn it on. I just didn’t do it. We had no zinnias this summer. But… on the way home from my walk, I noticed some zinnias growing by the garbage dumpster. I didn’t plant them. They just came up. Nobody watered them.  They wanted to grow there and, by golly, they did. It was a little bright, pink spot in my day…..some ‘light’ to let me know that God has not forgotten me and what makes me happy. I think it’s interesting that they grew right beside our garbage dumpster. What a contrast. Black, trashy, smelly stuff and then………..pink flowers. Light…. right next to darkness.

Light CAN be found…….even in the darkest of moments, afternoons and blocks of time.

God and His creations, His influence and His light are all around me. I just need to keep looking for it.

Written by Faye

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Ashton Mayberry ~ Age 2 ~ His sister bathed him!

I went to lunch with one of my sisters in Thatcher and she told me, “Ashton is free. He doesn’t have to deal with his body any more. This life is all about the body.”

I’ve thought a lot about that last sentence of hers and it’s so true. This body we have is all consuming for us. Much of what we do on this earth is taking care of our bodies. We feed it, water it, wash it, cover it, work it, rest it, exercise it, and do our best to keep it feeling well. Big bodies take care of little bodies.

This life IS all about the body.

When Ashton was born, April 30, 1992, he had to stay in the hospital for a few days because of jaundice. It was hard for me to leave him there while I went home. I finally got to bring that little body  home on my birthday, May 4th. He was my birthday present.  I took care of that little body for a long time.  So, when Ashton died, I still felt very responsible for that bigger body. I stayed with him until my dad came to pick him up. Carter and I helped  to load him in the van. We went down to the mortuary and helped unload him. I was so glad my dad was going to be the one taking responsibility for him. It would have been very hard to leave him with someone else. My dad told me later that in all his years in his profession, he has never had a family member participate in loading the body of their loved one on the stretcher. I’m including that here, not because I am anyone special. All I knew, at the time, is that I had a huge need to be sure his body was taken care of. He was MY boy and my mother instinct was running at full force. I was like a lioness protecting her cub, and I was responsible for him as long as he was on this earth.

One of the first things I missed the most when Ashton was gone was that body. I was used to him sitting at my table, laying on my couch, sitting at my computer, laying in his bed. I missed the spirit that lived in his body, the one that smiled at me, ate my food, sat by me in church, joked with his brothers, and played with his nieces and nephews. I missed touching him and rubbing his head while telling him good night before going to bed. I still do.

I believe that we lived as spirits before we came to this earth. I believe that as we came to this earth our spirits were given a body to dwell in.  I believe this body we have been given is a gift from God. We are responsible to take care of it the best way we know how. I did my best to help take care of Ashton’s body…my very best.

Written by Faye.

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Jacob, Faye, Carter & Ashton Mayberry ~ Texas Canyon ~ 2008

When we were driving recently, I noticed the corner post to two fences that attached to it at ninety-degree angles. Over the years, some of the soil around that concrete base had been washed away, probably by water from heavy rainstorms that had drained right next to the base. The corner post was leaning inward slightly, being pulled by the weight and tension of the two fences.

When I saw that corner post, I then mentally contrasted it with the corner posts that Grandpa Mayberry installed on his farm. One of those posts had a concrete base that was about three feet long by three feet wide by three feet deep. I know that because we had to move it to another location because of fence line changes. That concrete base was massive! We had to move it with a tractor and chains!

Why did Grandpa go to such great lengths to make such a massive concrete base to his corner posts? My guess is that he had either seen or experienced himself a corner post like the one I saw while driving that didn’t hold up to the weight and tension from the fences that attached to it. Grandpa probably said to himself something like, “That will never happen again. It is worth the extra effort now to make a strong foundation for this corner post — so I don’t have to worry about its stability when it is under the weight and tension from the fences attached to it.”

Ashton’s suicide on January 28, 2014 is the biggest “storm” I have ever faced. Thomas S. Monson often quotes the statement, “When the time for decision arrives, the time for preparation is past.” This is what has been helpful for me to withstand this storm:

The Book of Mormon prophet, Helaman, taught his sons, “[…Remember], remember that it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, [and I might add when life shall send forth its mighty winds] yea, his shafts in the whirlwind, yea, when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo, because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall.” (Helaman 5:12)

Christ taught his disciples, “Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.” (Matthew 7:24-25)

Much like Grandpa’s corner posts, when the storms in my life have hit me, I’ve had to reflect on the foundation upon which my life is built. That foundation is my belief and hope in the Atonement of Jesus Christ, who has taken upon Himself my pains, sins and sorrows. I believe with all my heart that He did that for me because of His love for me. I love Him for that.

My quest is to strengthen my foundation in the “rock” of our Savior and His Atonement. As I do so, I will be like Grandpa’s corner posts. I will be able to withstand the storms, weights and tensions of life — whatever they may be.

Written by Carter

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Ashton ~ age 2

I learned something today. Something I kinda already knew. I just needed to see it written down to remember that I knew it. I’m glad to be reminded. This is what reminded me:

“You didn’t choose for your loved one to die. No one offered you a choice. You only  get to choose what to do with what has happened. We may choose to die when they die. Or we may choose to live, crippled. We may shuffle about as though all the color has been drained from our world – that is surely the way it feels. Or, we may accept what has happened and move beyond this present despair to a hope-filled life with meaning and purpose.”

“No one can make that choice for you. No one can or should rush you. It takes a long while, this business of moving beyond the pain. On the way you will want to be kind to yourself.”     Living After Suicide, Sue Holtkamp, Ph.D.

Wish I could list all the ways it says to be kind to yourself. There’s 20 of them. Here’s the ones that caught my attention:

– Accept nature’s slow, sure, stuttering process of healing (Love that stuttering word)

– Give yourself massive doses of restful relaxation and routine busyness. (I can do better at the restful relaxation part)

– Surround yourself with life-affirming things: plants, animals and friends. Take minute vacations from your pain to enjoy the wonder of these things.  (Never thought of minute vacations before. I’ll have to try that)

– Understand that sometimes your mind is a jumble. You seem gifted at forgetting things while sentence fragments and half-completed ideas compete for space in your mind. Slow down, give yourself a break and know that this will pass. (Yep, sounds like my brain.)

-“Cut and run” from people who want to tell how you should be feeling or thinking or behaving. There’s an excellent chance they don’t really know. ( I know people this has happened to but it hasn’t happened with me. I have THE most supportive people around me)

-Expect setbacks. Grief doesn’t move in a linear fashion. (See #1, stuttering)

-Accept the reality that you will never be as you were, but that life can be good again. (I have great HOPE that this will happen)

-Refuse to settle for just surviving. Choose to bring from this tragedy a lasting memorial to your beloved. A life well-lived can serve as that memorial. (I REFUSE to settle for just surviving!)

Carter and I have come to the realization that we have to DELIBERATELY CHOOSE to become better, or it won’t happen.

My default response to this pain and heartache is to curl up in a ball, not talk to anyone and not go anywhere.

But…..I HAVE A CHOICE….. and despite this setback, despite Ashton’s absence, despite this pain that I feel…. I choose to live a hope-filled life with meaning and purpose. With Christ’s healing gift, with God’s love and the guidance of His Holy Spirit…. I will do it !

Written by Faye