Confessions of an Emotional Hoarder

Today was one of those days when there was a lot of drama in my life.  My hubs and I went out for a bite to eat after work to unwind and sort some of it out…  A dear friend sent me a text message and asked where I was, so I told her. A few minutes later she showed up with a beautiful tulip to show her love and support… what an awesome friend I have!!!

So we all huddled up in the booth to chat, so I could get my weekly dose of my dear friend. (It’s really what helps me get through the week!!)

We started talking about hoarding and she commented that everyone hoards something. She confessed that she hoards craft supplies. As she was saying this, I started taking a mental inventory of everything in my home to try to think of what it is that I hoard.

At first my thought was that if there was ever anything that I can never buy too much of, it would be food storage items. I love the feeling of safety and security I get when I look in the garage and see shelves lined with canned goods and bottled fruit. But as soon as the thought came to me, I realized that I don’t REALLY hoard that since I don’t have an emotional breakdown (like you see on TV) if someone takes a can of chili off the shelf in the garage and eats it when I’m not looking. (Cookies yes, but canned food, no!).

As I thought a little more about the idea that “everyone hoards something”, I wondered what I am so emotionally attached to that it is physically painful for me to let go of.

Then it hit me….

I am an emotional hoarder. I don’t mean this in the sense that I get emotional about material things. I hoard emotions. I have a hard time letting go of emotional baggage. I hoard grudges. I hoard anger.  I hoard spite. I hoard anxiety. I hoard other’s imperfections and shortcomings.  I hoard mental lists of wrongs I feel people have done to me. I hoard all of that negative emotional garbage because it is painful to let go of it and forgive. I have a tendency to want to hang on to those things, to protect myself. My flawed way of thinking is that if I hang on to all those things, then I won’t be vulnerable to letting the acts that caused those emotions, ever hurt me again.

I also hoard positive emotions such as compliments and love and kindness and understanding and forgiveness, by not giving them freely and often to others. There is no reasonable explanation for this. It’s not like, if I generously give those emotions away, that I will ever run out, because I know in my mind that the more I give away, the more reserves I will have to draw from.

What I realized today is this:

By hoarding those negative emotions, we cause ourselves to be hurt over and over by them.  We give too much power to the people that caused them to begin with. If we let them go, sure, we might be vulnerable and we might get hurt again, but in the meantime, we are free from the baggage that weighs us down and holds us back. We are free to fill our emotional storage closets with positive emotions that can help us be more Christ like. We have more space in our lives for love and kindness and understanding and forgiveness.  Our emotional capacity is like the space in our home and if we fill it with unnecessary “stuff” , then there is no space left over for happiness and joy to dwell and we find ourselves out of balance and unable to navigate in a healthy emotional environment.

It is time for an intervention in my life and I am determined to purge my “space” of all the negative thoughts and emotions that I have been hoarding in order to make room for the emotions that will make my life more fulfilling and enjoyable. I am going to try living life with an open heart and that may leave my soul exposed and a little more vulnerable, but I believe that by doing this, there will be more room in my life for joy and happiness!

How to Eat an Elephant ~ Chapter Eight: Opposition in All Things

Things would not be right in the world if I wrote a book about the lessons I learned from my dad and did not include a chapter on the importance of picking a good spouse. My dad hit the lottery when he married my momma!

One of my dad’s favorite Waylon songs was “Good Hearted Woman”….

A long time forgotten the dreams that just fell by the way

The good life he promised ain't what she's livin' today

But she never complains of the bad times

Or the bad things he's done, lord

She just talks about the good times they've had

And all the good times to come

He likes the bright lights and night life and good time friends

And when the party's all over she'll welcome him back home again

Lord knows she don't understand him but she does the best that she can

This good hearted woman, lovin' a good timin' man

She's a good hearted woman in love with a good timin' man

She loves him in spite of his ways she don't understand

With teardrops & laughter they pass through this world hand in hand

A good hearted woman, lovin' a good timin' man

From the outside looking in, I can’t think of a better way to describe my parents.

I may have gotten my competitive nature from my dad, but I got my toughness and strength from my momma. Her example of unconditional love towards so many people inspires me to be a more selfless and giving person.  That love and sacrifice of her own momentary happiness saved my dad and by so doing, gave our family the opportunity to be together forever. My mom is the glue that held it all together, especially during times when most families would have come completely unraveled. She was a rock during some really hard times and she has truly lived the entire spectrum of “for better or worse”!

Thinking of the differences between my parents is a testimony to me of the concept of opposition in all things. They say opposites attract and that is certainly the case with my parents. But the lesson of opposition here goes much deeper than that.  Most of the lessons that I learned from my dad were because she allowed him the freedom to be such an awesome dad. I want you to know, mom, that I recognize that and that your sacrifice in that area did not go unnoticed!!!!!

If you try to put two magnets together and you put the same polar sides towards each other, the force repels the magnets from each other. You can’t make them touch each other unless you turn one around so that the + and the – sides are facing each other. Opposites attract. This is true in most marriages as well. As a result of this, most marriages result in a “Good cop…bad cop” situation. Our family was no exception. But I think it was more of a situation where she was the “adult” parent and my dad was her sixth child. They were married so young that my dad’s mom often said that my mom was the one that raised him. He was quite a handful to try to raise and keep out of trouble, but somehow she ultimately found a way to do it.

The lesson here of opposition goes much deeper than their difference in personalities. The lesson learned about opposition is also demonstrated in the idea that in order to truly know joy, you must also experience pain.

Without the times of not having enough money, I would not appreciate it when I am able to buy the things that my family needs. I would also not have learned about hard work and working hard if there had not been a need for me to provide things for myself as I got older. I would not have learned to live on love (and stale potato chips!!!)

Without the times of witnessing strained relationships, I would not appreciate having a husband who does not drink and party and get angry.

Without my dad temporarily losing his priesthood authority, I would not have an appreciation of the difference that makes in the home and know just how blessed I am to have a husband who is worthy to hold and exercise that blessing in our lives. I have felt the void that is present when it is not readily available in the home and there is a noticeable difference.

Without my dad being excommunicated, I would not have learned such a powerful lesson on the miracle of forgiveness and the repentance process.

I could go on and on with examples of lessons I have learned about opposition and I am sure many of you have similar comparisons…. Look for those comparisons in your own life…. Look for those “strawberries” and recognize them for what they are.

Let me end with this…

Without experiencing the loss of a loved one that you were really close to, one simply cannot understand the level of appreciation that comes from knowing how important it is to love the people who are important to you… RIGHT NOW… Deeply and unconditionally… Before it is too late.  After a person experiences that kind of loss, you learn to let your hugs linger a little longer, say I love you more, and truly feel the depth of that love. You learn not to let opportunities to spend time together slip through your fingers like sand from a broken hour glass. There will come a day when you can’t turn over the hour glass and have more time. When it breaks, the time just slips out and is gone and you can’t ever get it back.  That is the moment when you will be glad you have the memories to occupy your mind. Those memories will help to fill the void that is left. Pick up the phone and call a loved one just to hear their voice. It’s so hard when you wake up one day and realize that you don’t remember what their voice sounded like anymore. But the opposite of that is, that when you no longer hear the echo of their voice in your head, you begin to feel the presence of their spirit in your heart.

How to Eat an Elephant ~ Chapter Seven: Sing Like You Know the Lyrics

It’s hard to talk about my dad and not mention his appreciation for music. Growing up, music was a big part of our life, but probably not in the way most people would think of having a musical influence in their home. Dad loved his country music. Whenever we were in the truck with him, he would have his own eclectic mix of music playing. He enjoyed the road and the radio and he taught me a unique appreciation of music. Waylon Jennings was his favorite. My dad loved the hillbilly lifestyle and the lyrics of Waylon’s songs seemed to best describe my dad’s attitudes about life. Waylon was a big influence on my dad's attitude. So much so, that to be honest, I am a little surprised that I was not named “Lucille”. Waylon & Willie, Johnny Cash, Billy Crash Craddock and others like them sang what turned out to be the background music in the movie that was my life. When Waylon Jennings died, I felt like I had lost my dad all over again. It is crazy that I would grieve over the death of someone famous, whom I had never met, but I felt like I knew him because of the memories that were made while his songs were being imprinted on my mind during my growing up years.

When my brother’s wife was expecting twin boys, everyone (except my sister in law) thought it would be the perfect tribute to my dad, to name the boys Waylon and Willie. When she was in labor, she refused to go to the hospital until my brother promised her he would not put Waylon and Willie on their birth certificates while she was unconscious!

 Often times, when I am feeling melancholy and wanting to feel close to my dad, I go for a drive and turn on the Waylon tunes….. It brings back lots of memories… happy ones and sad ones. These were our camping and fishing tunes. Even though it has been over 30 years since I went camping or fishing with my dad, to this day, I still can NOT ride around the hills of the Bear Lake Valley and not hear echoes of it in my mind. I am fairly certain that the ghosts that haunt the hills above the reservoir are humming, " I've Always Been Crazy, But It's Kept Me From Going Insane"!

Dad rigged up this box to put in his truck that had a portable 8 track player and a speaker. It was a homemade boom box before there was such a thing as a boom box. Whenever we were in the truck riding around or kicking around a camp site, he had his special kind of music blaring from his homemade boom box and we would sing along… whether we knew the lyrics or not. There was this one song by Billy Crash Craddock, called Sweet Magnolia Blossom. It became known in our family as the meatball song…even though nowhere in the song is the word meatball used.  My little sister was young enough that she didn’t understand adult ideas and so she would sing what she thought she heard in her 6 year old mind. She mixed up the lyrics and instead of singing “it was me boy”, she would sing,” it was meatball”….LOL!

My own daughters must take after my sister because they have done the same thing on many occasions. One time we were driving around (not that long ago, mind you) and a Beach Boys song came on the radio… Keep in mind my girls would have no idea whatsoever what a T-Bird was, so as loudly as they could, they were singing, “She’ll have fun, fun, fun til her daddy takes her TV away”… hahah…..I almost ran off the road I was laughing so hard! The words don’t matter! In fact, I have learned that the song is even more memorable when you mess it up!  

The lesson here is this: It was family time. It helped create our own special memories and the power of music helps us to recall memories and to remember and share those times with other people who experienced something along with us. Music, whether it’s classical or hillbilly, is a powerful way to cement ideas and memories into ones subconscious mind. With my own kids, we have some favorite “road tunes” that we listen to whenever we go on a family trip. It is just silly old country songs, like Big John and  Wolverton Mountain ( just to name a few),  that have become part of our family tradition. When one of our daughters left home the first time headed to college, she didn’t get very far down the road before she turned on these road trip songs to keep her company. She called me to tell me that it just wasn’t the same listening to them alone…A pay day for my mommy heart that she would associate those songs with fun family memories and that listening to them without her family would cause her to feel an emptiness and longing for her family... Those memories that she has of the times when we, as a family,  were doing something together while listening to them are indelibly etched in her mind. (If you happen to catch Emma and Savanah together, be sure to ask them to demonstrate their version of the music video for “The Battle of New Orleans”.)

My girls and I frequently gather around the kitchen while I am cooking or baking something and have a Martina McBride or Adele concert on the fly. I hope when my kids are older and they hear one of those songs we like to sing, that they will smile and think of our fun road trips or their silly mom in the kitchen, dancing with the broom and singing like no one is listening.

How to Eat an Elephant ~ Chapter Six: Don't Be Afraid of Snakes!

Besides sports and camping, my dad also loved to hunt and fish. There are a couple of important rules to follow when it comes to hunting and fishing:

Rule #1…. Never, never, never hunt on Sunday… Bad things happen when you hunt on Sunday… It seemed like every time he broke this rule, even if it was just to go road hunting, something would break down or get stuck… I remember more than once, mom having to go rescue dad because he didn’t make it home when he was expected because he was stuck or broken down.

If someone ELSE invites you to go hunting on Sunday… don’t fall for it. Otherwise you may have to pay the consequences of “guilt by association”!  A couple of times my mom had to hike out of the woods with him because she “went along for the ride”… This lesson was drilled into my head… just don’t do it… it’s not worth it.

A side note to Rule #1… ALWAYS tell someone where you are going in case they need to come rescue you… ESPECIALLY if you are breaking rule #1!

Rule #2… What happens at deer/elk camp, stays at deer/elk camp. This would include all pieces of clothing that are worn during camp as well as stories of what may or may not have happened… since this is an important rule, I am not allowed to share examples here, because that would be a violation of rule # 2…If you have been there you understand. If not, it is something that you just need to experience for yourself.

Rule # 3… Don’t moon your buddies who may have a camera in their hand. One time he went fishing with my brother and he was down by the water and my brother was up on a ridge. My brother was taking some pictures of the scenery and dad thought it would be funny to moon him at the exact moment my brother snapped the picture. No harm no foul, right? WRONG! My sister in law developed the film and left the pictures sitting on the counter. Her mother later came along and was looking at them. There was a small spec in the picture down by the water and she (my brother’s mother in law) asked, “What kind of animal is that?” HAHAHAHA! NEVER MOON THE CAMERA!!!

Rule # 4… This is probably the all-time most important rule to remember…

DON’T YELL SNAKE!!!

My dad was afraid of snakes! Seriously, deathly afraid of snakes… when I say deathly, I mean do-this-at-your-own-peril.

Since knowledge is power, we quickly figured out the joy of hiding behind something and yelling “SNAKE” whenever he walked by. One time, my brothers and I were playing in a nearby field and we caught a bunch of tiny water snakes and put them in a 5 gallon bucket by the back porch… we had no idea that snakes could just slither up and out of the bucket without a lid on it, so when we came back to check on them later in the day, imagine our surprise when we discovered the bucket empty! My dad was soooo mad. He didn’t go in the back yard or in the basement for weeks because he was afraid he would see one. We did find several of them in the basement dead and crusty over the next several months.

 While we had a lot of fun teasing him about his fear of snakes, it was a very real fear for him.  So real in fact, that he carried his pistol holster over his shoulder when his fished in case he saw a snake. And he always poked the bank with a stick to scare away anything that was slithering around before he climbed out of the water… this would be why it’s the most important rule… He had been known to draw his gun on someone if they came at him with a rubber snake….. He didn’t mean anyone harm, it was just an involuntary reaction that he had no control over.

So.. it was good sport to jump out from behind a door and yell SNAKE, but you had to make darn sure he wasn’t armed and dangerous when you did it!

This taught me that it’s ok to be afraid. My big strong dad was afraid of a little water snake. Fear is a real thing and you can’t let it paralyze you and prevent you from doing the things you love. It is important to  learn to face those fears. Instinctively he knew that there were snakes in the water, but he went fishing anyway.  He prepared himself (with his gun) in case he came face to face with the source of his fear, but he never let it stop him from doing something he loved to do.

Many times in my life, I have found myself afraid of something. As someone who suffers from anxiety, social situations are my “snake”. I have been known to have an anxiety attack in the grocery store if it is unfamiliar to me. I hate change and situations where I am not in control of the circumstances. Social situations and doing new things are very difficult for me and people often misinterpret me as being unsocial when in reality, I am just afraid. I try to draw on his strength and his example of not letting fear control my life and make me miss out on doing fun things because I am afraid of the unknown. It’s kind of funny that I can stand in front of a group of people and give a lesson or a talk and not even think twice about it, but one on one contact in social situations with people who aren’t in my normal circle of trust is almost as paralyzing to me as a snake was to my dad.  My fear is not as extreme as his fear of snakes, and I don’t frequently go to the grocery stored armed, but the principle is the same.  There are many times in life when we find ourselves in a situation where we might be afraid to get in the water because we are afraid of what might happen when we climb out of the water and we don’t know what may be lurking in the grass on the bank. But we can’t let that stop us from getting our feet wet. I am so grateful for my dad’s example of learning to face a paralyzing fear and knowing that you can still find a way to enjoy activities that can cause fear and anxiety. I have also found that as you do those uncomfortable things, pretty soon your comfort zone has expanded to include the very things, that at one time, seemed undo-able.

How to Eat an Elephant ~ Chapter Five: Don't Be So Busy Making a Living That You Forget to Make a Life

Growing up, my dad never really had one career that he did day in and day out. Most people don’t know that he had a degree in law enforcement from BYU. But he never used that as a way to support his family. My first recollection of him working is when he owned Peterson Oil. He had a tanker truck and he would go around the valley delivering fuel to farmers. I remember riding with him in the truck in the summer time while he was doing his deliveries…. When that ended, he was the delivery driver for Garrett Freight and he would deliver freight around the valley. (I’m still bummed that Dustin ended up with the Garrett chair….!!) He was also a delivery driver for Frito Lay and drove to neighboring communities to stock chips at grocery and convenience stores.  My dad liked to have jobs that would offer him the flexibility to not be stuck in an office. He worked hard at his job and taught us the value of hard work. Because we didn’t have a money tree growing up, I remember doing things at a very early age to earn my own money. I would get up while it was still dark in the summertime and go pick raspberries and I worked at lots of different jobs such as fast food and cleaning motel rooms. I learned to work hard!

I don’t remember a time when money wasn’t tight. We didn’t go on grand family vacations to Disneyworld or Hawaii or Mexico, and when I was younger I was envious of my friends whose families did things like that, but looking back now….what we did do was so much better!!!

My dad loved two things… sports and the great outdoors.

In the winter time, the gym was our playground. He would find a reason to be at the gym almost every night. If he wasn’t playing city league or church ball, he was refereeing the games. My brothers and I would tag along and the bleachers and hallways at the gym on Main Street were where we played.  As I got a little older, he always talked me into running the scoreboard or keeping the book.

In the summer time, our only limit to fun was our own imagination. The ballpark was our nightly hangout on the week nights and many weekends. My brothers played and my dad coached little league and he played city league and, like basketball, if he wasn’t playing or coaching, he was umpiring. We had lots of fun hanging out at the park. (We didn’t have handheld video games back then, in fact, I remember when he came home one day with a new TV that had Pong on it. We were the coolest kids on the planet because we had PONG!) Because we didn’t have anything electronic to take with us to the gym or the ballpark, we had to use our imaginations to keep us entertained for hours at a time.

My dad also lived to go camping. The woods became our playground almost every weekend. I have little recollection of what the adults did during the day when we were camping, but I have some very vivid memories of what the kids did.

The kids would scatter and do our own things and when we got hungry, we would find our way back to camp. I remember being appalled one time because aunt Pat put pickles in the tuna fish…LOL… but we played hard, so we were hungry and I ate every bite… not as bad as I thought it would be. We were always in a hurry to eat so we could get back to our imaginary lives, so dad taught me that I could finish lunch faster if I put the potato chips ON the tuna sandwich. That way you can grab the sandwich and be on your way and you didn’t have to wait around to finish the sandwich AND the chips!

We learned to use our imagination by doing some pretty creative things and most of the time, we got away with doing whatever we wanted. I remember one time, we were camped below the dam and a friend (who shall remain nameless to protect the guilty) and I decided it would be fun to build a little rock dam in the stream below the spillway so that we could create a pond of sorts to land in when we slid down the spillway on our behinds! We worked all day stacking rocks across the stream and building it up. It never really did anything except make a mess of the watercress. There wasn’t a lot of water coming over the spillway at that time…Just enough to let some algae grow in the center of the spillway, which made for a very slippery slide.  It never occurred to us that the algae would stain our white shorts black and that we would totally get busted for doing something dangerous… not to mention ILLEGAL!!! My dad was not upset… he was very concerned that we had done something dangerous and that taught me to think about consequences before I planned any more dangerous (or slightly illegal) activities in the future. He also made us go back to the watercress and remove every rock that we had placed across the stream. He had a love and appreciation for the great outdoors and taught me to respect that and to enjoy being there, but also to leave it the way you found it and not be disruptive to nature.

My dad set an example of how important it is to work hard, but he also taught us to play hard. He never really made much of a living, but he understood the importance of making a life.

I have learned to appreciate the tiny moments because life ends too quickly. In hindsight, the lesson was there for me to learn growing up. I regret that I didn’t do a better job of abiding by the lesson while raising my own kids…. But the lesson is this:  Take time to watch a Braves game, play catch with the kids in the back yard, go to their ballgames or sporting events to support them, play games together, sing like you know the lyrics…. (that is another lesson) Hug more, say I love you more, don’t leave things undone or unsaid… take time to create memories and traditions, because after a loved one moves on, that is really all we have left to cling tightly to… until we meet again!

How to Eat an Elephant ~ Chapter Four: The Miracle of Forgiveness

This would be one of those chapters that I mentioned earlier, that might be difficult to read and it was certainly difficult to write.  This chapter probably could be written many different ways depending on whose perspective you are seeing it from. Looking back with the benefit of nearly 30 or so years of experience, this happens to be my perspective…

Much of my memory of my childhood took place during a time in my dad’s life when he was making some poor decisions, like drinking and partying with his friends. It seems like when a person gets caught up in this cycle, one bad decision leads to another and it becomes an out of control downward spiral. This led to him making some bad choices that caused a lot of hurt to the people he loved, especially my mother. I think most of the people who know my dad, already know that because of his transgressions, he was ex-communicated from the church. What most people don’t know is that it was his decision. He sat me down one night when I was a teenager and explained to me that he had made some mistakes and that in order for him to make things right, he had asked for this to be the course of action so that he could begin the process of righting the wrongs he had done. He viewed this not as a punishment, but an opportunity… and opportunity to start over. That was a big lesson for a dad to teach a young teenage daughter…. With few exceptions, no matter what you have done, there is a way to make amends and start over. It was a long process that took many years for him to be ready to start over and be re-baptized. It was a long process of forgiveness. He had to get to a point where he was humble enough to be able to forgive himself before he could have a fresh start.

One Christmas, he came into my room and handed me an invitation card. He told me to open it. It was an invitation to attend his baptism… on Valentine’s Day the following year. He asked me what I thought and told me he intended to give that invitation to my mom for Christmas. What an amazing gift.  We had waited many years for this day, but the true gift was the man he had become through the process of repentance. He had learned to control his temper and he had stopped participating in the destructive behavior and hanging out with friends that chose a different lifestyle than the one he wanted to live. They were not bad friends by any means, they were good people and I have many fond memories of our families spending time together. I think the changes he made in his life earned him a new level of respect from these friends. He was a changed man, not perfect, but better.

Through this process, it was also an opportunity for those around him to have the chance to learn and grow and become better people as they had to find a way to let the Atonement into their lives and be able to come to a point where they could forgive him for his transgressions and the hurts that his choices caused those who loved him. Many people rallied around our family and offered guidance and unconditional love for my dad, and for his family. It was a hard thing for him to not hang his head in shame, but he set a great example for us of owning up to your mistakes and the healing power of the Atonement.

His life has taught me that forgiveness is not a single one time event. It is a process. How long that process takes is up to the forgiver. The person who wronged us may not ever ask us forgiveness, but we are required to forgive anyway.  This process involves us communicating with God and turning over our hurts to Him. The Atonement is there for us to be able to let go of our hurts and allow mercy to take place, rather than demanding justice. Consider a balance scale with justice on one side and mercy on the other. Our task when going through the process of forgiveness is to try to find a balance between our demand for justice and our ability to extend mercy to the person that we need to forgive. If our demand justice becomes too heavy, then it tips the scale and there is not enough mercy to maintain a good balance. THIS is the process I am referring to. As our “forgiveness scale” tips up and down, up and down, eventually, with the help of the Savior, we will be able to balance our scale and THAT is when true forgiveness happens. This is also true when we need to go through the process of forgiving ourselves.

When my dad died, I was understandably sad and then when my sister died 2 years later, that sadness turned to anger. The only person I could blame and be angry at was God. I don’t believe that God gave my dad cancer, but I do believe that God could have taken the cancer away and cured Him….. if it had been God’s will.  The same is true for my sister. I don’t believe that God caused her death, I have arrived at the understanding that her time on earth was predetermined and that it was simply her time to go.  It has taken me a long time to find balance with this anger and realize that it wasn’t doing me any good by feeling this way. It only held me back in my own journey of spiritual growth.

My whole life I have been quick to anger.  Perhaps I learned that from my dad. My dad figured out how to control that anger and be soft and kind and that is a lesson I am still trying to process.  I can say that I have learned that it does no good to be angry at God. In order for us to forgive people who have wronged us, we need to have a conversation with God about that person and ask God to help us truly forgive that person.  If we are angry at God, then calling on God to help us get over our hurts, is often harder than calling the person who has wronged us and perhaps even harder than extending mercy. If we want forgiveness, we have to be willing to offer forgiveness, it is cyclical in nature. If we are not square with God, then we can’t truly offer forgiveness and that breaks the cycle so then we also are not able to truly receive forgiveness.

 I now realize that certain things are foreordained to happen in order to allow us to grow and develop to our full potential. My dad believed that he knew before he came to earth, what kind of pain and suffering he would have to pass through while dealing with cancer. He believed that he agreed to the deal because he saw, in the pre-existence, how his journey would touch and positively affect the lives of those around him. I am certain that many people have learned lessons from my dad’s journey and his example in life and perhaps his life ending so young was foreordained to help those around him realize certain lessons that they would not have learned by any other means…. Strawberries!!!