blogger profile

Jane Porter

A novelist and a single mom, I live in Bellevue Washington, write for two publishers and love being a mom to my two boys. I'm passionate about books, travel, and what impacts women's lives. For more info on me and my books, visit www.janeporter.com ...

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The First Days of May

Jane Porter

I’m a writer—a novelist—and a single mother of two boys.  It’s busy life, complicated by the fact that I live in two places that are 2,600 miles apart.  When I’m not jumping on and off airplanes, I’m working on a chapter, writing a speech, shuttling the youngest to lacrosse and the oldest to baseball. 

Like other women, I wave to my friends in passing.  Like other moms, I greet quickly, casually with a “How are things?  How are the kids?”

Usually our friends are good and their kinds are fine.  Usually it’s the little things that irritate us and form our complaints.

Usually.  But not a week ago Friday.  A week ago Friday a friend lost her college freshman.  He was nineteen and handsome, smart as hell and his high school’s MVP athlete, too.  But there he was, skateboarding at night as a college freshman.  He was hit by a bus at midnight and he’s gone.

I knew this nineteen year old and I knew this family and I have dashed to their doorstep so many times to collect my youngest from a playdate with their youngest.  My son Ty has practically grown up at their house these past three years.  The mom and dad are amazing, good, kind, hardworking people. 

Life is short.  Life isn’t planned.  Life happens.

Life happens.

And we can’t make it unhappen, either.  But God, I wish there was more when there’s less.  I wish there was something else, some way to prevent the breaks and losses, the pain and guilt.  I’d erase all suffering.  I’d erase all sorrow. 

After loss people like to say there must be a reason, that God has a plan, that God knows all things and there’s a reason we lose someone we dearly love.

I don’t agree.  I don’t think God wants us to lose anyone at anytime.  I don’t think there’s a master plan that hand selects those that live and die.  Those that are injured, wounded, suffering.  It happens.

Where God comes in is before and after.  God is for strength.  God is for will.  God is to help us stand again, to try again when we are so broken we don’t know how we’ll ever really feel or hope again.  God is for peace when our hearts and minds are anything but calm.  God is love.  A reminder that all we can do in life is hope and try and love.

Love before, love during, love after.

That love really is the only thing we’ll ever have, and even if those we love die, those we love go, we can and must continue to love.  Love those who are no longer present and visible.  Love those who are beyond.  Love those who are before.  Love those who are yet to come.

My heart breaks for my friend.  My heart breaks for my friends’ remaining sons.  My heart breaks for the one now gone.  But I will remember him with love, just as I will think of his family with love. 

During the month of May I will be a guest blogger here at Skirt, and while I can promise you that not every entry will be about loss, I can safely predict they will be about life, and love. 

Life and love fill my novels.  They fill my JaneBlog on my website.  They fill my head and heart.  After forty-four years, I know this much is true:  if we love, we live.