My blog counter hit the 1,000,000 mark yesterday. A million visits by who knows how many people. What an amazing thing it is that so many people have shown love, concern, and interest in Camille, her story, her mission, and her family.
All this in one year. A year ago today we held her funeral. I have a CD recording of it. I have not listened to it yet. But I think perhaps today I will. Jon and I talked today about how important it is to remember Camille. It is not important to remember the pain and suffering we have and sometimes still do feel. It is not important to remember the tragedy of her death. But there are so many good things I do want to remember.
I want always to remember how our family rallied around us in our darkest hours. They went to amazing lengths to comfort, console, and help us. All this while feeling their own sense of loss. We have been richly blessed with an amazing family. They literally held me up when I could not get up on my own. No matter what difficulties, disagreements, or divides we may face in the future, the love they showed me after Camille's accident will not be forgotten. It ties me to them even more deeply than I thought possible.
I also want to remember the feeling in our home just after Camille's passing. I needed it to be a place of love and peace so that I could feel her near. Time has worn down that NEED and our home is not always a place of peace and love. But I want to remember how it was in the beginning because that is how I want it to be always. That is now the goal for which I daily strive.
I want to remember all the kindness of friends and strangers, the powerful feeling on being prayed for by so many, the goodness of mankind. These memories give me hope in a seemingly morally deteriorating world.
I want to remember the way I saw my children through Camille's eyes that first day after she died. I want always to see them for the glorious spirit children of God that they are. Even when they are being naughty, I want to see the light that they innately carry as spiritual offspring of divinity.
I want to remember our drive to live clean and worthy lives, continually repenting and relying on the Saviors atonement to make us so. I want to remember to repent every day so that I can be as clean and pure as Camille is and so that if my time should come tomorrow I would be worthy to be with her. I want this memory to drive me not to screw up so often in the first place.
And I want to remember Camille. I want to remember our family as a family of four little girls. I want to remember that now there are 7 of us, not just the 6 I can see. I want to remember her sounds and smells and snuggles. I want to remember her enough for her sisters to lean on my memory when their own fades. This is the hard part of remembering. It brings with it such acute missing, longing, and heartache. Still, I want to remember because memories are all I have left of her.
And so this Father's day we will remember the little girl who last Father's day we held as she passed from our arms to her Father in Heaven's arms.
And this Father's day we will rejoice in the new little son with whom our family has been blessed. This Father's day we will be grateful for a loving Father in Heaven who has trusted us with 5 of his choice children. This Father's day we will give the Father of our little family all the love, joy, and pampering that was overlooked in the shadow of grief last Father's day.
Happy Father's day Jonathan.
To us 6 you are one in a million.
