Birthdays and life...

Happy 12 birthday sweet Joeli!!!! Hey everyone,  my name is Mandy, I am honored to be a guest blogger today. I don't really know where to start, so I'll start with her first birthday. I was working in Mobile for a few weeks at Toys R Us (I worked at TRU in Hattiesburg through college and the store in Mobile was changing locations so I volunteered to help) and it just happened to be around Joeli's birthday. I remember buying a giant Winnie the Pooh, well giant to a kid anyway ha and stopping by to see Britt, Joeli and Chad. She was beautiful and perfect, toddling around and jabbering like most one year olds would do...I don't remember exactly how she reacted to me showing up? However, I do remember wishing I lived closer and wishing I had been around more because this was the first time I met Joeli. I couldn't believe she was a year old and I was just meeting her. Britt and I had been best friends since her senior year in high school and my freshman year in college. We had a life BFF plan...were gonna be crazy neighbors and eventually crazy old ladies rocking on a porch together and breaking out of whatever nursing home our kids would put us in haha! Britt got married and I was still in college and our lives started to drift apart. We still talked and I remember many conversations with Joeli in the background talking, laughing, singing and most of the time she would just get the phone and talk to me or sing whatever was on the radio! She had the cutest country accent and was wise well beyond her years. At the end of our conversation she would usually tell me "peace out". It would always make me laugh and I knew she was going to grow up to be just like her momma. I didn't visit as often as I should have and I regret only making that one birthday .... The last time I saw Joeli was on August 5th 2006, she came to my wedding. Britt and her two girls and her aunt packed up and drove an hour and a half in a storm to come see me get married. I was in the bathroom when they all came in soaking wet... it was literally a monsoon on my wedding day, lightning, wind and buckets of rain (a bucket of rain means when you step outside in the rain it looks like someone poured a bucket of water on you) and I remember a quick hello and then we took a picture together at my reception - just me,britt and the girls. That was the last time I saw her.



I remember that heart wrenching phone call, I was at work and Britt called in tears and told me she was gone. My heart broke for her...I don't remember much of that conversation, I just remember crying and telling her I was sorry and then driving to Mobile.  It felt like it took forever for me to get there, I was going 80 or maybe even faster at times but it just seemed like the road was never ending. After that visit, that just seems like a blur, I vowed to do better... But I didn't, we made a few trips throughout the years and if I was passing through I would call and do lunch or swing by... But I wasn't a good friend. I didn't know how to be. Looking back I should have just hung around. Showed up. When someone loses a child their whole world is forever changed. Nothing will ever be the same. There is never a fix to the problem. It is just a forever hole that can't be filled. I never know the right things to say and for those that know me, I put my foot in my mouth often! But the older I get the more I realize that with anything in life we are just suppose to show up. You can't fix it, but you can be a shoulder to cry on, an ear to listen and a place to go. 

On Aug 18 this year Joeli would be 12.  This past weekend I drove over to hang out with Britt and the family and to just be around to do whatever she needed me to do to prep for Joeli's bday. We drove out to her marker one day to change the flowers and clean it. I had never cleaned a marker before. It was amazing to watch this momma have the strength to do this. To pull up at a cemetery with towels and a special solution to keep her marker clean. To watch her go in a flower shop and pick out an arrangement to place in her vase for her birthday. She should be planning her 12th birthday party and having talks about boys and starting middle school. Instead here she is, on her hands and knees cleaning the marker of her baby, holding back tears and weeding around the edges, wiping off dirt that blew over from another site, getting bit by the ants that seem to be everywhere and prepping everything so they can come back and release balloons on her birthday. How anyone has the strength to do that blows my mind. I am in awe of her. We sat for a while on the ground in silence once we were done. A million things ran through my mind but there was nothing to say. She broke the silence with stories and memories of being at the cemetery. I ended up taking a few pictures of her while we there and then we just sat and talked for a while until she was ready to go. If time ever sat still, I would say it sat still here...

I don't know what it's like to lose a child but I do know that she must have a strength out of this world to even be able to wake up each morning. Not to mention live a daily life with neutropenia and raise two more girls (one with neutro) and to do so with such grace and a fierceness like I've never seen. To live life every day wondering what life would be like if she was still here? Wondering what she would look like? Who her friends would be? What her interests would be? What would she sound like? What kind of relationship the girls would have? What it would be like to be complete? I never know the right things to say but I will say that this life she lives shows me Jesus daily. There is no other explanation... Nothing else could sustain her but the grace and mercy of our God. He alone is all we need and He alone is the only explination I know of that can give her this strength.

I don't know how to end this so I'm gonna leave it in your hands... You out there... For Joeli's 12th bday tell me some stories... If you knew her or know her momma... Share some fun stories to fill her heart... I think this is one of the best things anyone can do for a friend who has lost someone... just talk about them... and even talk about who you think they'd be...Happy birthday Joeli! 

For me, I think she would be a spunky 12 year old, testing out her own style (kind of like Maya on girl meets world) and probably begging for some bright colors in her hair. She would have an infectious laugh and sense of humor that would make her the hit of every social gathering. She'd be a killer ball player, a phenomenal singer and an amazing big sister. Solid in her faith and love of Jesus and bold in anything she believed in.  Most of all I believe without a doubt she would be her mommas best friend. Sing loud sweet girl! Happy birthday :) Me and my boys are gonna go EAT CAKE in your honor!