A Drive Through Memory Lane!!!

The month of January is a hard month.  November is Thanksgiving, December is Christmas and even though it is cold, its a warm time in our hearts.  We get together with family and friends.  Football season and tailgating comes to an end.  I guess we should look at January as a new beginning and in a way it sort of is.  People make New Years Resolutions that they may or may not keep, but it is just a let down sort of month.  It is hard to keep up the good time feeling that has been going on through the holidays.

The month of January is a very hard month for my family because you see it was January 14th when my daughters lost their best friend, their brother, my husband lost his buddy, his son and I lost one of the dearest people im my life, my son.  It has been 16 years since he left us.  Sixteen long years in some ways and others, it seems like yesterday.

Mike and I took quite a little drive down memory lane this past week.  It was trifold.... You see the cemetery where Ryan's body lies is called Memory Lane.  So a drive out there is a for real drive through memory lane.  Then the other day we drove up to Binger to eat at one of our kids favorite places to eat when they were little.  I even had the fried chicken salad I always had.  From there we drove west to Three Way and then turned and went through Oney.  That is where I went to school and where Ryan and Krista started to school.  Then it was on south to Grandview Ranch where I grew up and where my children spent 5 of their best years of their lives too.  Nothing looks the same, but the memories are there.  I thought about my dad and the times I ran 3/4 of a mile down the road just to ride home on the tractor with him.  I thought about my kids playing under the same tree my brothers and I played under....by the way..... that tree is still there.  So many good memories.

After we left the area where I grew up we drove to our farm of sorts...72 acres of trees, Peck's Country, the sandrock hills.  This is the real memory lane for our family.  This is the place where we raised our kids.  I said 72 acres of trees...that's not really true any more.  The 72 acres of trees and the house burned up on father's day, June 19, 2011.  It really does not look the same.  I am not sure that the trees will ever grow back in our lifetime.  The drought has not helped.  Mike, Richard, Dewayne, JJ and Dustin have done some work to make it better, but there is a long way to go.  My kids loved this place and it is so hard to look at it like it is today.  We have our memories and thank goodness no one can take those from you.

So Mike and I took a real visit down memory lane, and drove down the roads of our memory lane, but we also took a virtual one remembering all the good times we had before January 14, 1997.  There have been many people ask how did you get through 1997, because we lost my mother that year too.  I was talking to a very good friend yesterday who has also experienced loss in her life.  She told me that she liked to think of it like this,  God is always there to pull you through the hard times, if you can just hold on tight enough to let him get you through it.  I can tell you that it was not always easy to hold on, sometimes it was just by a thread but we have made it this far.  There's not a day that goes by that we don't think of Ryan and remember him.  In our books he was a very special person.  I want to share with you a dedication that one of Ryan's wrestling coaches wrote about him.  I think it expresses how many people who knew Ryan felt

I can say this.....Ryan was a fighter....he never gave up!  One of our dear friends always called him Rambunctious Ryan and it always seem to fit him.  Because of his attitude, we too shall continue on, even when it is difficult and we don't understand.  We have made many good memories since he left us and we have many more to make in the future, but a couple of times a year...or a day....we think about those old memories and smile, and thank God we had you for 21 years.