The Circle of Life...

A strangeness has been in the air recently....

I suppose it started a few weeks ago when a co-worker in my office went on leave because both of her parents were very ill...her father ended up passing away a couple of days after an initial email went out regarding her situation....

And then over this past weekend...

Saturday specifically...Dan and I had a lot of running around to do in the daytime and we initially noticed a LOT of really careless drivers in the area...people cutting us off or almost running into us or into someone/something else...moreso than you normally see on the road......

I remember thinking something felt strange....then all of a sudden there is a really bad car and motorcycle accident that had just occurred within minutes of us passing it on a regular street.....couldn't tell if anyone was hurt, but it looked pretty bad...

Then later that evening on the freeway there is a car completely burned and gutted on the freeway...again, couldn't tell if anyone was hurt, but it didn't look good.....

And then Sunday, my good friend Kristen texts me and lets me know that her grandfather passed away in his sleep unexpectedly....an extremely hard loss for her and her family, especially coming out of the blue with no indications that anything was wrong....

And then on Monday there starts a cycle of new life...I come to work and find out that my boss and his wife had their baby a week early on Sunday night and had spent the night in the hospital and will be there most of this week....a little boy named Jack...

And then today I receive a text message from my friend Amanda who says that her and her husband just found out that they are now pregnant and expecting their first child together (they each have a child separately already)...!

Exciting news....that follows such sad news and loss....the circle of life...this morning I just wrote Avery's birthday tribute for the Compassionate Friends December newsletter....and I was overcome with tears as I wrote that it would have been his 5th birthday had he still been here with us...and that the memory that has been playing in my mind a lot lately is the day that Caydan was born and the two met each other for the first time...how sweet he was with Caydan, without jealousy, only pure love and amazement.

And as I write this, a song that always makes me teary-eyed is playing on my Pandora account - Here Without You by 3 Doors Down.

If you haven't listened to the song on my 2nd post in this blog yet - Homesick by Mercy Me - I encourage you to do so....it touched me very deep when I heard this, and anyone who has a religious faith and has lost someone will be able to relate closely with the song...and perhaps find comfort in the fact that other people share similar losses that run deep.


P.S. I wanted to add two other instances that I left out that add to my post even more...my cousin's fiance's uncle passed away in a violent death just a couple of weeks ago as well...extremely sad and heartbreaking....
...and my friend Jen's little niece was born on Oct. 27th as well.....

Very sad passings, and very exciting new births are everywhere.....just moreso inmy life and those around me lately for some reason.