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