Just a thought… As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them. [John F. Kennedy]

I’ll start this week’s blog by suggesting that if you want all of the tea on what happened an entire, eternal week ago on our election day, please listen to Ep. 124 by going to gracefullyandfrankly.com. It’s free, 30 minutes long and I promise it’ll be worth your time; subscribe so you don’t miss an episode!

Today I’ll focus, not on the week past, but the week ahead. And I don’t know where to go with this except to say thank-you.

This Sunday, Mother’s Day, as fate would have it every five or six years, marks a bottomless crevasse in our lives and lands on May 11th: ten years since we got that call that our Lauren had died in her sleep at 24.

So much has happened in those years that I can barely list them:

Her son Colin, who that day turned seven months old, has grown into a wonderful tall boy (with men’s size ten feet!) whose passions are baseball and Leafs playoff hockey, who is funny, beautiful, sensitive and a wonderful big brother to the sister who is five years his junior but will always be our equally-loved grandchild, a gift of Lauren’s widower Phil’s second marriage to Brooke. So many blessings.

That joy was magnified exponentially when their little foursome moved west five years ago to just a few minutes’ drive from us, in our new home of British Columbia. We had left Ontario a year after Lauren’s passing, ready to make a fresh start and close the door on broadcasting, while opening several in the world of podcasting. Rob’s and my reWirement activities continue gently and with more than our share of satisfaction.

After four years of missing family and the life they had, Colin, Jane and their folks moved back to Ontario last summer, and in that time of healing on our part, Rob and I have relocated away from a sprawling house surrounded by tall trees and often visited by deer, to a sweet little town and an oceanside condo, where our telescope is poised to capture orcas. Haven’t seen one yet, but our walks are dotted with seals, eagles, outrageously beautiful vistas and lots of other little dogs. Oh yes – we said good-bye to Pepper and Molly after their full and happy lives, and brought Dottie and Livi into our home, finding love where we can get it and give it.

Ten years ago when well-meaning people told me that time helps, I found it almost offensive, like one of the “at leasts” that I caution people from using in my book Mourning Has Broken: Love, Loss and Reclaiming Joy. Oh yes, I wrote a #1 Globe and Mail bestselling memoir about our experiences, what we learned and how there is a hope for joy down the road after experiencing so much trauma and pain. It wasn’t a “how to” as much as a “how we did it,” with lessons to take or leave, but mostly to let people know that they are not alone in whatever they feel at any moment of grief, in the myriad ways in which it presents itself.

I have experienced so much in the aftermath of writing that book and continue to share what little wisdom I can, when people who’ve read it write to me. Most recently it was a bereaved mom who had lost her beautiful adult son. I told her, in an analogy that came to me recently, that it’s like how in the course of our lives we often gain 20, 30 or 40 pounds. Now, if that was in a backpack, our younger selves might find it unbearable to carry, day in and day out. But our bodies adjust and that burden becomes a part of us. It’s the nearest thing I can think of that’s the least bit original when it comes to how we, as the Beatles put it, “Carry That Weight.” You just learn how. You shift, you struggle, but you live your life as best you can until you decide it’s perhaps time to put some of that heaviness aside. Or not.

As we begin our second decade without the daughter we had for only 24 years, Rob and I continue to try to live in a way that we hope would make her proud.

I found sobriety (thanks to six weeks in rehab) nearly six years ago, and am working at it one day at a time. Rob and I have our sad days but they are fewer; I’ve bent the ear of more than one good therapist, and know to seek help when I need it, instead of drowning my feelings and making them worse. I’m grateful not to have allowed anger to eat me alive. We accept that which we cannot change. And every day I keep looking for that pony in the manure pile. It’s got to be in there somewhere, right?

Most of all, I’m grateful for the kindness, damp shoulders and bent ears that Rob and I have both encountered in the past decade, many times from people like you. We try to give it back wherever we can, and be the parents that Lauren deserved.

Sometimes it all feels like a dream, from beginning to end. Was she really here? Who are we now, and why? But we know we’re not alone and, this Sunday, as always, we’ll keep our eyes and hearts open for signs that she’s here. I wish you a Happy Mother’s Day and thank you once again. I can’t say that enough.