Rock and Walk

 

 

Yesterday was the Rock and Walk event with The Tears Foundation. Tears is a somewhat local group that assists families that have lost their babies. They help with funeral expenses, costs of head stones, and they offer a lot of support groups. We attended their Mother's Day event, so we were excited to see how this event turned out.

It was bittersweet, to say the least.

I tried to go into it optimistically. But then seeing all those butterflies and those names broke me. All I wanted to do was sit in the bleachers and cry.

A random lady came down and talked with us for a few minutes. She hugged us and went back to her seat. It was nice. I felt so alone in there until she came down. 

A lady read the names of every baby being walked for that day. As she read the names, little pieces of dandelion fluff started falling around the field. They fell lightly at first, but as the list went on, more and more pieces came down. It looked like it was snowing. When the list was finished, the pieces of fluff were gone. 

The baseball field was lined with butterflies. Handmade butterflies with the names of babies that have been walked in honor of or whose families were helped by Tears. We were told after the walk was over, we could go out and get our butterfly and take it home with us. We never found ours. A lot of families didn't have their butterflies out there. I was a bit disappointed. I didn't let it get to me at first. But I wanted to put it in a scrapbook that I'm trying to make about the babies. So then I just cried some more, and I told Bryan I wanted to leave before it was even over. 

The best part of the day was the little boy sitting next to us toward the end. He was sitting in a little circle of people. He said "Wook Momma! I gave that boy my shoe for fibe dowwars!" as he held up his bare foot with a big smile. He was so proud of himself. 

The random lady came up to us again before we left, to give us one last hug. Her daughter lost her baby last year, and her daughter lives in Australia now. She's fighting this battle as a grandmother on the other side of the world. It was so nice of her to talk to us and make sure we weren't alone. She frequently visits blogs and pages like Faces of Loss and Grieve Out Loud. She said she posts as Grandma Vicki. If any of you ever see her, send her my way. :-)

Today, I'm feeling like I've been hit by a train. All that pollen out there killed my allergies. It hit me in the middle of the night as I was sleeping, and I woke up feeling like someone was sitting on my face. My face hurts from the swelling in my glands. I'm completely miserable. And I get to go to work in a few hours.

Although my weekend didn't turn out as well as I had hoped, I'm glad that I made myself go to the Rock and Walk. I needed that, even if it did make me cry. I read on their facebook page that they made $75,000 with this event. Their sponsors took care of all the extra costs, like renting the stadium, so all that money is going directly to the families that need it. I think I can suck up the allergy misery for that.