picking up pieces

One of the hardest parts of tragedy is that life goes on. My sister and I were nearly overcome by that realization on Monday as we sat on the 5th floor of the hospital, staring out at a view of almost the entire Salt Lake Valley. It almost made me dizzy. SO many people. So many lives. Here we were, holding on to each other, struck to the core with pain and sorrow so deep that it grabs you and pulls you inside out, and out there were so many lives continuing on. Life must go on. Even if you want to sit down in a corner and cry for days, you just can't.

You get up and make breakfast. You dress your children. You write and work and clean and keep going.

But every few minutes, you remember. It hits you. Your eyes fill with tears, you pause, you swallow a sob because your sons are watching and they're tired of seeing Mommy cry.

And then you keep going.

Perspective is an interesting thing. How quickly it can change. What constituted a bad day a week ago is quite different than this week.

And at the end of the day, the thing that keeps you going--the thing that makes you able to get up again and make breakfast again and keep going, doing, living--is hope. Hope that someday, somehow, this will all make sense. That wounds will be healed, that hearts will be mended. That happy endings really do exist, and that Megan will be blessed with one. Not today. Not tomorrow. But someday.

Hope.

That is my hope for her. For all of us.