No matter how long, there never seems to be enough time. Whether it is 17, 27 or 57 years. There is never enough time. But if you ask me if the choice is 17 years or no years, I would instantly tell you 17 years. I would rather have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.

“And now I’m glad I didn’t know, the way it all would end, the way it all would go. Our lives are better left to chance. I could have missed the pain, but I’d have had to miss the dance….”

Garth Brooks says it best. There will be pain, but to avoid the pain and the grief that means you have to avoid all the fun things that lead up to it. All the baseball games, all the years of Tournament Ball (traveling all summer), each weekend a different tournament and a different field. The years of Suburban Football, and having to be at a field at 6 am at a place an hr away.

The years of camping as a family and finding sand in shoes months later, watching both of them boogie board long after the lifeguards left. Crabbing and fishing with Mark, even though they never caught a darn thing. Ice cream every night when we were camping, and nightly campfires, when the bedtimes went out the window.

Those are the “dance” times that I will remember, I have pictures of many of them. But even without pictures they are burned in my forever memory.

I wouldn’t have given up those times forever. It made us who we are as a family, I am glad I didn’t know how it would end. But I wouldn’t have changed a bit of their childhood. And I hope that they wouldn’t have either.