Living Through The Loss

Please keep My Friend Debbie in your thoughts and prayers.

I have this wonderful friend named Debbie.  She lives in NY.  Staten Island to be exact.  She and I and many who may be reading this have something in common, we have lost a child.  Debbie lost her teenage son about a year before I lost Ashley.  His name was Joey and he died as a result of his injuries during a car accident.  That common loss was the thing that brought us together.  Debbie thrives on the paranormal world.  In fact, she was on an episode of ”Maury” today as a professional paranormal investigator.  Her big thing is EVP, or electronic voice phenomenon.  This is the belief that the voice of spirits may be heard if recorded and then played back.  Sort of like the movie, “White Noise”.  Whereas you or I may not believe in such a thing and I’m not here to judge the validity of the practice either, but Debbie really does get into it.  I admit I tried it, as I would imagine most grieving, desperate mothers would but I never felt any real sense of contact the way she does.  But the most important thing of all here is the friendship that grew out of this crazy beginning.  Debbie always says to me when we discuss what life feels like for us, “We’re screwed.”  I always agree.  We are.  Now, mind you, we always laugh about this in a sort of why-bother-believing-it-might-ever-be-anything-else sort of way.  In a we’re-stuck-and-there’s-nothing-anyone-can-do-about-it sort of way. We even laugh about how death doesn’t scare us anymore.  If someone or something were to threaten to kill us, well, we would say that they better come up with something worse than that, cause death we don’t mind.  Well that threatening something has come to Debbie in the form of pyogenes staph pneumonia.  Apparently Jim Henson of the Muppets died of it within 12 hours; it’s a killer, very aggressive. She is literally barely hanging on.  There are many, many people praying for her around the clock, I among them and I ask that you might do the same if you are the praying or spiritual sort. 

I just think that this case is a little different from most people who need your prayers of healing and strength.  This is how I have finally come to see it…..she is going to have to fight like a tiger to stay alive, does she really want to? I’m not sure she doesn’t want to give up and just go be with Joey.  Now she has a daughter who is a senior in high school and needs her desperately as do the rest of her family and friends but the battle is Debbie’s and Debbie’s alone.  Fight to live and come back to us or let go and be with Joey.  Few people understand what a battle and what a fierce decision that would be, so here’s how I have prayed.  I’ve prayed to God, but mostly to Joey that after a nice visit with her, he might convince her that where she belongs is back here with us. Her value is here and it is great.  She would be sorely missed!!! 

Please join me in asking Joey to remind his mom that her days on earth are not done.  That she is greatly loved and needed here.  That’s who holds the power.  Wouldn’t you say?