flying home for Roma

(Please forgive me that this is repetitive and doesn't flow well- I've written it over several days and am still just utterly tired.)

Two weeks ago, on St. Nicholas Day, we went out to eat. I'd left my phone at home because I couldn't find it. When we got home, we put the kids to bed, and I wrote a blog post for St. Nicholas Day before putting on my bathrobe, where I found my phone in the pocket. When I turned it on, I saw all of the texts, the prayer requests, the awful news of what had happened to Roma while he was at work, almost ready to go home for the day. But he never would return to his earthly home.

Last week was one of sleeplessness, of little appetite, of tears, of questions, of sorrow. But seeing my family last Saturday night was the beginning of healing for me. My parents are the most amazing people I know. I have always known their faith to be strong, but the faith and love I witnessed in them as they retold of the incidents of the past week and God's plan for Roma's life seemed insurmountable. I watched them both stand at Roma's Celebration of Life on Monday and speak through tears of the privilege they had in raising him, of the gift God gave us in knowing him, of the ways God worked through Roma and continues to work in him. Of course, there were were many laughs as well, and Roma was laughing along with us, I'm sure. I'm sure he has relished being the topic of everyone's conversation this past almost two weeks. As the pastor noted on Monday, Roma was not known for his humility, and he loved to be the center of attention :^) He also knew how to push everyone's buttons. But that charm he possessed... you couldn't help but love him anyway.

We couldn't help be recount all of the special gifts leading up to Roma's death- the fact that all of us were home at Thanksgiving, as he rarely seemed to be home when we visited, that he was home for the past seven weeks of his life, giving my parents some quality time with him... When we got news of his passing, it had only been a week since we'd seen him last. And though we didn't know it would be the last, our goodbyes to him when we left Maryland after Thanksgiving were fresh and sweet in our memories.

It is never a happy time when tragedies befall us, but it was a huge blessing to be reunited with people I haven't seen in many years, and to meet people I had heard of only through Roma stories (there are so many Roma stories). Seeing the line wrapped around inside and out of the funeral home (during both two-hour visitation times) on Monday was a witness to his life- of the love he shared with so many. And there were those on the other side of the world, also mourning his loss, this boy with whom they had hoped to be reunited one day. It was an especially nice show of support and love to have our friends (Toby's godparents) come all the way from Pittsburgh for his Celebration of Life and our friends from college come down from Hanover for the visitation. Some other friends (Opal's godparents) came and brought some fun activities to occupy our kids during the visitation and the lunch on Monday so that we could visit with people. And my parents' generous neighbors kept us all fed and even took our kids off our hands for a while one day. We have some amazing friends.

The kids had never flown before, so they enjoyed that. Our flights to and from MD were about half empty, and the back of the planes, which we had chosen for our blocks of seats, were even emptier. The flight attendants on our way out told the kids they could each have their own row to lie down in and brought us all kinds of snacks (though they didn't give any to the other passengers), which made the trip as enjoyable as it could have been. Mike put some cool drawing app on his tablet and let the kids take turns with that.

We are exhausted from the past couple of weeks, but have been so grateful for the outpouring of prayers, cards, emails, and shows of love during this time. Roma will be greatly missed, but as my mom so eloquently said, we are filled with joy and in awe of what Roma meant to so many people.

We are blessed!