Always In Our Hearts... Ashton

Two years ago yesterday my family lost a very special little boy.  Ashton had just barely passed the milestone of becoming eight and on a day where the sun was shining and any other little boy in town might have been outside playing beneath it, our little boy took his final breaths and let go.

Ashton's death rocked my world.  In many ways when I lost him, it felt as if I were losing what could have been my son.  Which is not to put myself in the place of his mother - I was and will always be Aunt Stacey - but I loved him in the same way a mother loves her own child all the way deep down to my soul.

When I think of Ashton, I can't help but smile.  He was just the biggest ball of love you could ever hope to find.  He taught me lessons he didn't even know he was teaching.  And it's because of him that I will always value every moment no matter if it's good or bad.  And I will be happy for each day even if every day doesn't have a happy ending.  He taught me how important it is to love with everything you are and all that you have no matter the outcome.  And he proved to me that sometimes it's okay to just relax sit back smile and simply be silly.

I wouldn't trade a single moment we had unless it was for a thousand more of those same moments.

I miss you Ashton. 

Pity Party for One

I wish I could just disappear.  Go hide out in some cabin on a mountain with just my dogs and a few good books to keep me company.  I'd spend my mornings sipping hot black coffee from an old red mug on a porch that only had one chair, watching the mist fade away like an old gray ghost as the sun slowly took over the Adirondack sky. 

I'd be content to be alone there.  Mountains after all were made to be lonely.

And as the morning progressed to afternoon, I'd find my old pair of hiking boots and leash the dogs for our mid-day walk.  We'd walk up the old mountain road in the direction of nowhere special and notice little things like wild mushrooms and green patches of moss, while the birds carried on their own conversations overhead.  We'd breathe in the smell of the forest and twirl around in wonder at how such a perfectly imperfect place could make us feel so whole.  With only happy thoughts we'd begin our trek back home to our small rustic cabin with a porch that only has one chair and only room enough for one woman with two small dogs to stay comfortably there.

The rest of the afternoon would drift lazily by and I'd feed the fire and feed the dogs and make my own dinner to the soft sounds of the camp radio playing soothing songs of simple verse and quiet refrains.  It would be dinner for one by candlelight as the moon climbed high and bright in a star filled sky.  Safe and warm, a cozy fire, a soft chair for reading and the dog eared yellow pages of a well read book I'd lose myself for a few hours before closing my eyes and crawling beneath the mounds of blankets that cover my big soft bed. 

And how I would sleep... Soundlessly dreamless with no thoughts of waking until the next morn.

The good thing about a mountain is that a mountain is enough for a single soul.  It puts to right all the things that have gone wrong.  It doesn't make promises it never intends to keep.  It doesn't offer lies in place of truth.  It doesn't say it loves you to make you stay or tells you it doesn't to make you go.  It's just a mountain.  Just a place that says welcome home.