Pennsylvania Trip #2

So, it’s Spring Break this week and the kids are out of school.  I had originally planned to go to the beach with them all week but then changed my plans.  I’ve always wanted to go back up to Pennsylvania around April 2nd because that’s the anniversary of the day that Jeny died, so I took advantage of the kids being out of school at the beach and Michael and I took a road trip to Pennsylvania on Sunday.  I had been looking at the weather forecast for 2 weeks before we left and there was snow almost everyday.  I got excited because the forecast for Sunday was looking like it was going to be sunny and clear.  But, like most of the time, the forecast was wrong.  We left at 6:30am and it was raining.  It rained all the way up the east coast and when we got to Pennsylvania around 4:00pm and it was still raining.  This is what our whole drive looked like:

We finally get settled in our hotel and then go out to get something to eat.  Since we don’t have to worry about any kids, I wanted to go get some beer or something.  We go to Wal-Mart and look up and down all the drink and food aisles and don’t see any beer.  I look in the coolers for cold beer and don’t see anything.  We ask an employee and they said that they don’t sell alcohol…wtf?  I Google it and find out that Pennsylvania is an “alcohol beverage control state” and has certain laws regarding the sale of alcohol.  Gas stations don’t sell it either and it was also Easter Sunday, so the places that would have sold it were closed.  We finally found a bar that was open and was able to buy some there.  I’ll know next time to just bring some with me

Today we ate breakfast and then visited the cemetery.  The last time I was up here we ate at a restaurant called Luigi’s and it was awesome.  I wanted to go there last night but they were closed because of Easter.  So, after visiting the cemetery, we went to eat lunch there.  As we were sitting in the restaurant waiting on our food, I heard a song playing in the background over the speakers.  It wasn’t very loud and it was the instrumental version, but I recognized the notes immediately.  My heart dropped and I asked Michael if he could hear the song.  He couldn’t even hear the song playing at first but after telling him what song it was (Nothing Else Matters by Metallica), he recognized it.  It was the song playing in my car right before I witnessed Jeny’s motorcycle accident.  I’ve spent 14 years avoiding and refusing to listen to that song, and here I was sitting in a restaurant in her hometown and I was forced to listen to it.  I couldn’t stop the tears because it was just so ironic.  Michael said that she was watching out for me and I believe it.

I met with her sisters again tonight and it was just so good to see them again.  They told me stories about their family and we all just talked for a few hours.  I hated leaving them and I hate leaving here.  When I’m up here and with her family it feels like part of me is healed.  Now there’s that heavy feeling in my stomach because I know I have to leave again soon.  14 years ago I was changed and a part of me died when Jeny died. Every time I come back up here and talk with her family, it’s like I get a little bit of “me” back.  It just sucks that it’s a 10 hour drive.  On another note, I am looking forward to seeing 60-70 degree weather again

 

Related Posts:

Earthquake (in more ways than one)…8/23/11

Off to Pennsylvania…(hopefully sometime in the near future)…9/12/11

2 Days Until Pennsylvania…10/13/11

We Made It…10/17/11

Going Home…10/18/11

Photo of the Day:  #33 “Nothing Else Matters”…2/2/12

Photo of the Day:  #72 “Jeny”…3/12/12

Photo of the Day:  #93 “April 2″…4/2/12

Signs…3/11/13

Weekly Writing Challenge: In An Instagram

Just as we can suspend a moment in time by snapping a photograph, an instant can change our lives forever. For this week’s writing challenge: tell us about a moment when your life was changed in a split second. The good, the bad, the funny, and the thought-provoking, our lives are composed of a series of meaningful events that help to shape who we are. Every now and then, we get a wake-up call where a snap decision or revelation changes our perspective completely.

This week’s writing challenge perfectly fits the main reason I have a blog…to talk about the instants that have changed my life.  I’ve posted about it before but the more I talk about it, the more it helps…so if you’re tired of reading about it just hit the handy dandy little “back” button on your browser.

Life is full of “instants” of time.  That’s all that life is.  Most just pass by unnoticed and don’t get remembered from day to day.  It’s only when something good, great, funny, sad, or traumatic happens that the “instants” stick out in our mind.  I’ve had a few “instants” in my life that have made question why things happen the way they do…I was in high school at band practice one night and got the news that my now-husband was in a bad motorcycle wreck.  I remember where I was standing when I heard and I remember seeing him in ICU hooked up to all those tubes.  I remember lying in a hospital bed two days after having my first child and a nurse waking me up to tell me that they had to take my daughter into the NICU because she was breathing too fast (she ended up having pneumonia and was in the hospital for 2 1/2 weeks).  I remember lying on a table in the ultrasound room and the nurse telling me, “I’m sorry but I don’t see a heartbeat”.  I remember sitting on a bed in the emergency room, holding onto my 11-day old youngest daughter for dear life after being told that she had bacterial meningitis and they didn’t know how things were going to turn out for her.

And then there is the “instant” that has been stuck in the front of my mind for years and years, the one that changed my life in a split second, the one that has changed me.  The instant where I witnessed a life being taken, the instant where a man lost his girlfriend, the instant where a family lost their mother/sister/daughter/friend.  The instant where you hear a man talking to the woman he loves, assuring her that everything is going to be okay, but you know that she will never respond back to him.  I was just days over the age of 18 in that instant of time.  For the past 13 years I have let that instant define me.  But not anymore!  I’m finally learning how to process these memories and “file” them away in my brain, so they’re not always in the front taking over everything.  Just like things can happen for the worse in an instant, they can also change for the better