In the blink of an eye, the snap of your fingers, overnight, life truly can change. Just. Like. That.
Nobody and nothing can prepare you for it. You don’t expect something so sudden to happen. And when it does, it knocks you right off your feet.
Last Sunday night was like any other night. Getting the boys ready for bed, making sure Malachi’s school stuff was ready, making sure our stuff was ready for a day at the gym. We were actually done with everything pretty early, had everything ready and gotten into bed at a decent hour.
It was a miracle.
And Monday morning. Well, we woke up to chaos in our household. And just like that, everything changed.
Our alarm goes off at 430a on Monday mornings. It’s the one morning we coach the early class at the gym. And most Mondays, we struggle our way out of bed and caffeinate with the best of them.
But last Monday, Nick got up immediately with his first alarm (this is unheard of for him). When he opened our bedroom door, I heard a man speaking to him. And immediately wondered why a man was in our house.
As I laid in bed wondering if I should get up, Nick comes back in and says, “They’re doing CPR on my mom.”
Nothing like those words to shoot you out of bed like a rocket!
Neither of us had any clue what was going on, what happened, how long they’d been working on her. It was a nightmare to have woken up to.
When they were finally able to get her stable, they transported her to the hospital. And the waiting game began.
It was a scramble to get our classes covered as we were both in a fog and anxious to find out what happened and how his mom was. All you can do when you wake up to something like that is speculate and wonder what the heck happened!
There was no indication Sunday night that anything was wrong. It was just like any other night. So it was all a surprise and a terrible way to start the week.
Unfortunately, our story didn’t end well. Nick lost his mom this week. Our boys lost their nanny. Nana lost her daughter. And I lost the best mother in law anyone could ever have.
It was a scary week, full of despair, anger, disbelief, sadness, grief, fogginess, just to name a few. We had hope things would end differently, but as the week went on, we then hoped and prayed for a miracle.
This truly opened our eyes to how fragile and short life really is. You can’t take it for granted because you really never know when it could end.
Prioritize your health. Prioritize taking care of you. Prioritize the things you want to do in life. And then DO THEM.
Cherish the people in your life. Say I love you. Spend time with the people you love. And don’t take anything for granted.
I think back to the week of Thanksgiving and the following weekend, and I’m so thankful for the family time we spent together. From Christmas Town at Busch Gardens to Thanksgiving dinner to playing games as a family (where we laughed so hard, we cried) to Malachi’s 9th birthday party to decorating the Christmas tree as a family.
I will never forget all Robin did for our family, for us, for me. I will never forget that final week together. And I wish we’d done more. I wish we had known something was wrong. I wish our alarm had been set for 15 minutes earlier.
So many what ifs, so many wishes, so many things we wonder about. But the long and the short of it is we didn’t expect this to happen. We didn’t expect to have our lives flipped upside down overnight.
And nobody ever does. I pray you take this to heart and cherish every moment with your loved ones. Hug them close.
Have a great week. And be safe.
We love y’all.
Whitney
