How can a moment be so intensely beautiful and so exquisitely heartbreaking all at the same time?
How can a moment be so full of laughter and happiness and yet bring you to your knees in grief?
This was our weekend in Feb with the Very Special Kids hospice camp.
Let me explain.
Noah and I both love camp. It’s so much fun, he gets to hangout with the (incredible, selfless) volunteers and be silly and I get much needed down time with the parents I have grown to love very much too.
100 volunteers. 100 people, some here with their whole family, stop their lives and choose to jump into ours for the weekend. To be with us, to love our kids like we do, to see them, to include them and to make memories with them. That’s love.
I walked on the beach with the other parents, whilst Noah got up to no good with his minder, how perfect!
There are dress up nights, talent shows, cheese and wine, trivia, foot spas, nail painting, craft, firetrucks, silent disco and even a ride with the HOGs.
In the evenings whilst the kid sleep, we hang by the fire, drink wine and laugh until we cry.
You see we know each other already. We know this fight, we know this feeling, we know this joy, we know this pain, we know this grief. Even the parents we meet for the first time, in seconds we have know each other forever.
You see we are united by a child who’s time on earth will be much shorter than it should be. In a painful understanding of what will be and for some what has been already. We hold each other, we listen, we know.
It’s something you can’t explain to anyone else on earth. Not properly.
And oh do we laugh! The darkest sense of humour that shocks the volunteers listening, which makes us laugh even more.
I love this place and I don’t like that we are here.
I need this place and I wish it wasn’t this way.
I am so grateful to be here and I wish I wasn’t here.
I wish it was different for us all and I am so grateful for our life.
We live with joy because it’s not about sucking it up or soldiering on…it’s about embracing what IS happening, not waiting for things to change or stop be happy.
Living in joy is to love with our whole heart even thought there is no guarantee what the future may bring.
If the question is “What would love do?” The answer is this camp.