END OF THE LONG JOURNEY

Back in the late summer of 2009, I reconnected with my high school classmates in the form of a 45th reunion. Working with members of past committees for our class reunion, one individual was very instrumental in the success of the past, and now was in the center of a new attempt as worthy as the past. Her name was Michele, and she had experience and leftover props from the past reunions, she knew it would happen again.

As we progressed with our stellar committee, I started to learn about the past, the committee member's past and their travails. Two members stood out, one who was brave and suffered by herself, and one, Michele who took on something so meaningful along with her husband, Nick.

When Nick and Michele discovered they could not naturally have children, they did the next best thing for parents with a place but no children, they adopted. And so, a young child who was parentless suddenly had a home and parents, but mostly she had love, the love of people that wanted to share that love. Nicole was suddenly a very rich young lady.

As the years passed and Nicole grew to a young woman, she met a young man, they married and life seemed good for all, Michele and Nick had fulfilled their dream and Nicole, like every young woman fulfilled hers, life was good!

Then after a year-and-half, tragedy struck, Nichole was suddenly sick, so sick she was paralyzed and was under constant attack by her body, and for the next 14 ½ years, this fight raged on, and in spite of the rules of battle, she remained upbeat and determined to fight the disease and believe she would walk someday. Then one-day last week, it happened, Nicole had passed away. This horrible reality struck home, the unfairness, the suddenness, the hard, cold reality that has struck so many other parents when their child is taken away from them.

Nicole was a result, one where what came before her was so powerful it sustained, nurtured and fed into her heart and soul, forever binding her naturally to her adoptive parents. Their love, teaching, and example gave Nicole the strength she needed to fight with adversity, with strength and dignity. Nicole was definitely Nick and Michele's natural child.

How on God's good Earth, does he reward three people from different places find each other, give so much love with a wonderful hope for the future, have this horrible and unfair result? The hope of grandchildren, holidays spent together and all the wonderful things that life can bring you is taken away as from you as parents and child. There were too many days left needed to celebrate this beautiful union of parents/child. My hope is that they the parents will continue to celebrate Nicole's life and love for them, they did their job and now they need to rest and know they did the best anyone in life could possibly do, they taught to love and was rewarded with that same kind of love. That will never go away.