My dear friend...

I have updated this since the original post. I was honored to be asked by Elaine's family to speak at her funeral. It was the last opportunity for me to do something for someone that has done so much for me. This is the actual tribute that I read. She was a beautiful person, and this in no way does justice to what she actually meant to me. 
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I want to start by saying there are two things that I do not do….the first is speak in front of large groups and the second is cry in front of people. It’s very fitting that even in passing Elaine can get people to do things that they would normally never do. With that being said, I can think of no greater honor than to speak of what Elaine meant to me. You see, I know I each of you sitting in the crowd has your own stories of what Elaine meant, what we can all agree on is that Elaine was a precious soul that will be missed greatly.

Now as I said at the beginning, I do not speak to large crowds, however, I do read to groups of people, though they may be small, each day, so I’m going to read you my story of Elaine.

Two nights ago I received a phone call that I dreaded to get. It was the news that my very dear friend Elaine had passed away. She had fought for so many years against cancer, and it finally was too much. As I sat last night and today and processed all of this, so many wonderful memories of her have flooded my mind. I will miss her laugh, her smile, and everything that made Elaine what she was.

My first memory of Elaine comes from way back when I was first subbing at Zavalla Elementary during my early college years. I was in Sharla’s classroom, and she had left directions to write a poem, in cursive, on the board for all the students to copy. I know this is horrible, but I cannot write in cursive…at all. After several failed attempts at writing the poem on the board, I made the walk of shame across the hall and asked a lady that I really didn’t know all that well to come and write it for me. Little did I know that this lady would come to be one of the most precious individuals that would ever walk into my life. We have laughed about that since that day. Elaine was always ready to share a laugh with a friend.

I often joke that I have three moms, my mother of course, and then Elaine and Sharla. Since starting to work at Zavalla they have taken me under their wing and made sure I was well taken care of. There have been months upon months that I never packed a lunch because one or the other was going to bring me leftovers…and they were always there with a holiday shirt (so teachery of them) for me to wear for every occasion. That’s just the way it’s been. Me, Sharla, and Elaine. So many laughs, so many secrets, so much fun.

If you took the time to watch the slideshow last night you can see that Elaine had the “school teacher” look dripping off of her. She was everything that is school teacher. From her holiday shirts, to her glasses, all the way to the haircut. She made a difference in children’s lives. I have a friend that Elaine taught, she texted me the day we found out that she had passed, and she said “She truly was a sweet woman! I’ll never forget her or the impact she had on me! You may not catch them all, but you may catch one. She caught me when I was in the 2^nd grade!” You see, this friend of mine came from a broken home, and on one particularly bad morning, instead of disciplining her, Elaine simply reached down, put her in her lap and held her as they cried together. That was Elaine. She not only worried about a child’s education, but she worried about their hearts. You don’t find that often. 

Elaine, whether she knew it or not, has given me so much advice on life. When I sat at the table and complained over things my children were doing, she just laughed and said, “Soak it up, Aubree, one day you will miss this.” She would tell me to take time, sit on the floor with them, hold them when they cry, for someday they will outgrow wanting their mom. Elaine loved being a mother. She loved her boys. She loved being a grandmother even more. There is nothing that she wouldn’t do for her boys. My heart aches for them. My heart aches for her grandson and the many that will come later in life, for they will miss out on knowing how great of a woman their grandmother was.

Not only on advice of being a mother, she gave advice on being an adult. There have been times when I went to Elaine and no one else with my problems. She sat and listened. She never pushed and said you should do this or shouldn’t do that. She just listened. She always would end with saying, “Aubree, make you happy. No one else can. You live once, make it a happy life.” I will miss sitting on her little round reading table and unloading my complications. I will miss her words of advice. I will miss her.

Elaine was always there to help.  Whether that was with advice or to hang huge posters that I had imagined and created. I have always come up with elaborate schemes that Sharla would simply roll her eyes to, but Elaine would back me up. When I decided to draw a 12 foot clown, Elaine was there to paint it…and hang it because I’m scared of heights. When I came up with the idea of being the Lorax for Halloween and I wanted her and Sharla to be Truffula Trees, Sharla said no, but Elaine was there making the costumes for both of them. She had a way of getting people to do things, and she was the best at getting Sharla out of her comfort zone!

I debated telling this story, but it’s so very Elaine that I can’t not tell it, plus I’m certain she wouldn’t mind. Like I said earlier, Elaine loved to laugh. One of my favorite memories of Elaine is the day that I made fun of her because her jeans came up way past her belly button. I told her they were the worst jeans that I had ever laid eyes on, and she should never wear them again. Well, the next day she wore a pair of jeans, that I kid you not, the waist touched the bottom of her bra. We measured the zipper, it was literally a foot long. She wore them because she wanted to prove to me that there were worse jeans in her closet than she had on the day before. I have never laughed so hard in my life. It was so Elaine to do something like that. Just like it was so Elaine, to buy multiple boxes of Girl Scout cookies for the both us while I was huge pregnant with Paislee. We would hide behind my old library desk and devour them in secret…because Sharla would call us fattys if she knew how many we were eating at each sitting. Elaine was the sunshine in our cloudy world. She brought happiness even when she was feeling her worst. She was real in a world that it’s hard to find real people in.

I want to end with an excerpt from the children’s book The Velveteen Rabbit:

"What is REAL?" the Velveteen Rabbit asked the Skin Horse one day. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Velveteen Rabbit .

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand. But once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always."

Elaine was real. She was loved beyond measure. She was cherished and treasured. She was a rare jewel. She had a softness and kindness to her that I’ve never known. Words can’t describe how much she meant to me, or to anyone that knew her. She fought for so long, and I’m so thankful for the time on this earth that I got to share with her. I miss her greatly, but I know she is finally pain free. Elaine was the third leg of our lunch time party, she was the optimist in our realist/pessimist trio, she was our costume maker, our poster hanger, our cookie provider, she was our laughter, and she will be missed for a lifetime. 

Psalms 30:5

Weeping may last through the night, but joy comes with the morning.

Motherly Advice

I have never been a person to give motherly advice, well unless you count my zombie potty training technique (I’m pretty proud of that one). However, with all the first time expecting mommies I know out there I feel as though I need to write this. I want to start by saying, I love my kids with every fiber of my being. I can’t imagine a day without them in it. They are my sunshine on a rainy day… except for when they are the pouring rain, the tennis ball size hail, and the F-5 tornados, those days there isn’t much sunshine. These are the days that I want to focus on in this specific blog because if we’re being honest, if every single day was a sunshine and unicorn sparkly day, everyone would have 27 kids…there’s a reason the majority stop at 2, sometimes 3.

I’ll start with that fact that nothing in this world, no matter how many degrees you hold, no matter how many nieces or nephews you have…nothing, I repeat nothing, prepares you to be a parent. There are going to be days that play out nothing like what you had imagined. There are going to be days when you are utterly exhausted from a day of work in which you wish you could just go and collapse on the couch, or have ten minutes of reading in the peace and quiet of your living room, or sit down with a cup of coffee and just enjoy, but you can’t.  There will be days that your five year old decides to get angry over the fact that there are bumps on the road and it caused him to spill his chocolate yoohoo on his shirt (that same yoohoo that you went out of your way to buy him and surprise him with just to put a smile on his face when you picked him up) …which led to a total melt down and caused you to have to discipline him as soon as you walked in the door. There will be afternoons when while your son is screaming and crying in the bedroom, and you’re trying to cut avocados up for guacamole (which in fact are entirely too hard to do anything with, but they were the only ones in town and you are determined that something is going to go your way this afternoon) that your 3 year old decides to lie at your feet and ask you to please pour her yoohoo in her snackeez cup over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over again. There are going to be days when you say forget the flippin’ guacamole, although you’ve just spent 12 minutes trying to peel the avocados and your fingers are raw and you just throw the entire bowl away. There will be days when your five year old decides to water the cabbage plants (the ones that are still sitting on the counter where you left them a week ago with good intentions of planting them so that your children can watch something that they invest in grow) in which he doesn’t realize that there is nothing to catch the excess water and so there is now a large puddle of water on the floor. There will be moments in which your child spills all of the chips out of their snackeez cup onto the couch while they were trying to open it, so now there are two messes to clean up. Make that three because your daughter just decided she should put makeup (lipstick) all over her face. There will be moments when you hear someone hit from the bedroom, followed by a cry, followed by a harder hit, followed by a louder cry and you’re running that way to break up a fight…for the 4^th time since walking through the door. There will be days where it’s 4:45 and you’re finally getting to sit down for the first time and you’re at your absolute limit and a little voice says “Mom, I need to poop, can you wipe me?”. There will be times when you get busy again and you smell something and remember you put chicken nuggets in the oven…..crispy fried anyone?

So, I say all of this to say, being a parent is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I’ve taught a classroom full of second graders, I’ve taught a classroom full of fourth graders while pregnant, I’ve trained for and completed a half marathon, and I’ve earned two degrees and being a mom is still the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I’ve learned that it is a daily learning game that nothing prepares you for. I’ve learned that just because something worked perfectly yesterday doesn’t mean that it will not be an earth shattering catastrophe today. I’ve learned that you can have all the expectations in the world of how you will get your child to sleep all night, potty train, discipline and behave, but expectations are just that and they are not reality. What I’ve really learned is that it is totally okay to say that being a parent is challenging. That there are moments when all I want to do is throw my hands up in the air or lock myself in the bathroom or just go for a drive without anyone talking to me.

So for all of you first time, expecting moms, know that it’s hard. That there is a possibility that you will have an infant with colic that refuses to sleep at night, that there will be carseats that need pee cleaned out of because the diaper didn’t do its job, that no matter what discipline standards you set at some point your toddler will meltdown at the grocery store, that this adventure may not be anything like what you’re expecting…but most importantly know that there are other moms out there that have walked in those shoes and we do not judge when you say this is hard. There are moms out there that will listen to you when you need to vent, and you will need to vent. Know that you are not alone in this crazy, ever changing life with children world. I am thankful daily for other moms that I can text or share a glass of wine with after a very challenging day. My advice to you would be to find friends that will be there for you and support you, friends that will laugh with you when all you want to do is cry, and will say “it’s okay, I’ve been there and handled it the same way” because they are the ones that you will need in all of this.

That’s it. That’s all the advice I have today. The end. You’re welcome.

Oh….and never say “my child will never…..” because if you do, you have already doomed yourself!   

Pardon the language of this website, but if you ever find yourself having a really tough day, just visit this site and I promise you will be thankful for the children you have.

www.shitmykidsruined.com