You might think that nothing that you do matters, but it does because even the smallest thing that you do can save someone’s life, I know because I’ve been saved. This story is dedicated to my heroes who have saved and continue to save me everyday. This isn’t a story for sympathy, it’s a story about hope, faith and love. It’s a story of thanks to my heroes, who never seize to amaze me.
This story is for that moment when everything began. That moment when the beat of a butterfly’s wings set off a storm a world away.
Back in ‘80 You met a Brown -Eyed Boy who turned out to be a hero. In ‘81 You married the same Brown-Eyed Boy who has now become my hero.
Back in ‘98, the Brown-Eyed Boy became a man and gave up everything for one thing. We lost Him but gained everything because of the Brown-Eyed Boy who is now inside my locket. The locket I wear around my neck, the one I leave beside my heart so I will never forget Your greatest love, and the greatest Man who Heaven ever called home. I know that ever since then Your heart has been longing for the Brown-Eyed Boy inside my locket. The 17 years you two had together never seem enough, but He’s been gone for 13 now and that’s more than enough. I know you keep the love you two shared together in your heart. It breaks my heart to ask you to remember and to think about your love for the Boy inside my locket, but I know He’s always on Your mind because there isn’t no greater distance than the eighteen inches from your head to your heart.
Mom, I know it’s so unfair and hard, but you make it seem so easy. You make the hardest things easy. I know that you miss Him terribly, and I do too. I constantly find myself thinking about Him and I can’t help but wish if we could have just one chance. One chance to visit Him and be with Him for just one day. If only Heaven wasn’t so far away, then we’d both get to visit our Hero, we’d both get to visit that Brown-Eyed Boy who took your breath away.
You know, I don’t know how you do it. I don’t know how you’re so strong, I never thought that that kind of strength was possible. I will never understand how someone who has lost so much is able to give so much more. Every day I wonder how you were and are able to raise six children alone. Mom, you are and continue to be my greatest inspiration.I always wonder how you were able to go on living after you lost Him. How were you able to keep fighting after He died? I wish that I could have half the strength that you have. And I know that I always say that He’s my hero, but so are you.
Both of you are the reason why I am writing this story, and the reason why I want people to know the story about the Brown-Eyed Boy inside my locket. I want to show people that strength and hope is something you choose. I want to show them, especially those who are constantly making plans that you shouldn’t take life for granted because you never know which second is going to be your last. So many people waste their lives planning to do something and they miss out on so many important things because they plan tomorrow’s instead of living today’s.
Mom, I wish that they would listen and understand that life doesn’t work that way. That reality doesn’t work around your plans because it has its own. I wish they’d understand that you can’t live life planning for tomorrow because it’s never guaranteed. And that you have to take each day and make it last because all we have is here and now. One day you’re going to wake up and realize that the future is the past and when you look back, the beginning and end will mean nothing, because all that matters is everything in the middle.
I wish people would realize that life isn’t supposed to be easy. That in order to feel happiness you must feel sadness first, and in order to experience success you must experience failure, and most importantly, in order to value presence you must value loss.
We always expect life to be easy, so when it gets hard we blame everything and everyone except ourselves. But nobody ever stops to think that maybe we are the ones that set ourselves up for hurt because we expect so much out of life, even though we know that expectations only lead to disappointments. But we continue to make plans and we continue to avoid the reality of life. The reality that the plans and dreams that we have may never be lived because we may not get another tomorrow. So live life now, because you have the whole world waiting for you, and believe it or not, it’s in you that the whole world can be found. Take the time to look around and notice that the the world’s door is waiting to be opened, and you’ll realize that the key is in your hand, and it’s your decision whether you’re going to use it or not.
This story is for You. It’s for all those times when you fail to live in the moment. It’s to tell you that you have to take a look at your life before it’s too late. You always think that you’re going to have a perfect life with your whole family and all your friends by your side every step of the way. But you never stop to think that maybe, just maybe, life will challenge you. That maybe life will turn everything upside down and make you feel alone in a world filled with seven billion people.
I know that feeling, I’ve known it my whole entire life. I’ve known the feeling of reality taking a hold of your life ever since that one day. That day when my own personal, living hero became just a picture in a locket.
But don’t be fooled by that picture, because it’s more than a picture. It’s more than a loved one. It’s more than a story about loss. That picture is a life. It’s a hero. It’s hope and faith. It’s a Brown-Eyed Boy who is more than just a picture in a locket.
It’s because of that Brown-eyed Boy that I’m here today, and it’s because of Him that I feel obligated to share my story, to share His story.
I’m not going to write about the day He died or about how He died, because I don’t know. I don’t know what time or what happened the day He went home to God, or who or what ended His life, I wish I did but I don’t. All I know is that He died in a war in ‘98, in the small country of Kosova, and that He gave up His life fighting for the freedom that He never got to have.
I was very young when He died. I was only three years old when the person who turned out to be my greatest inspiration and my hero reached the ultimate finish line. I’m not going to say that God “took Him away from me”, because I’m flattered that God chose Him. I know that God only takes the best, and that only the good die young, and Him? Well, He’s as good as it gets.
But that doesn’t stop me from wondering. I always wonder: about how He died, about how someone could take someone’s life and have the decency to wake up the next day, and look themselves in the mirror, and be content with who they are and what they did.
It hurts. Even through all these years, it still hurts.
It’s been thirteen years.
Thirteen years without Him. Thirteen years since the day that would change my life forever. For thirteen years I’ve learned one thing about mourning and sorrow: it doesn’t go away. It’s not a light switch that you can turn off and on. You can’t lock the pain out and hope that it stops knocking. I don’t know very much about a lot of things in life, but I know a lot about loss and grief, and sorrow.
I know what it feels like to be angry at life, and God, and everything and everyone. I know what it’s like to have someone that you love and admire become someone that you admire through a picture in a locket. I know because I have to live my entire life without Him. I have to live with the hurt of not remembering anything about Him because I have no memories with Him. In fact, if it wasn’t for pictures I wouldn’t even know what He looked like, and that’s the saddest thing of all.
But in the end, no matter how much the pain of losing Him hurts, the love I have for Him outweighs everything. He is my everything. He is my light at the end of the tunnel, I always know I’m safe. There’s a saying, “When you want to give up, Hope whispers ‘try again’”. Well, He is my Hope. He is my faith and the reason I don’t give up, even when it seems like that’s my only choice. He’s not here with me in person, but He doesn’t have to be, because He’s in the lessons and morals that He taught. He’s in the stories, memories, laughter, and tears of all the people and lives that He has left a mark on forever.
At the end of the day, even through all the grief and mourning, and “what if’s”, He was a living hero, He still is a Hero. He risked His life for people that he didn’t even know and gave up everything for nothing in return. If that’s not a hero, then I don’t know what is. I’m not going to say that life is easy, and that even though He’s in my heart it makes everything okay, because it doesn’t. But it sure makes life worth it, because He may have left, but He never left me.
So this is for Him. This is for that Brown-Eyed Boy inside my locket who is more a part of my life that anyone ever has been and ever will be.
This is for You Dad. This is for not giving up, for being who You were and who You are.
It’s true that life is hard, and that everyday is like a marathon of living my life without You, but I want you to know that I live my life for You, because You gave up Yours for me. Sometimes, I can’t even believe that it’s been thirteen years. But I truly believe that these past thirteen years, every regret that was made, You knew it. Every thought had of You, You heard it. Every visit to Your resting place, You saw it. Every dream that was had, You were there, in it, and every tear that was shed, You caught it. I would say that You were loved and cared for, but that’s not it, because You are loved and are cared for, each and every day.
I know that you are watching over us and you keep us safe and alive. I hope you are looking down and you’re happy with what you see. I know that you’re the one taking care of us. You’re the one that takes care of Mom, and you’re the one that takes care of my brothers, even though they’re not young anymore, but they’ve been playing with fire. I know that you’re the one that takes care of all of us. It’s as if you think that what you did while you were here wasn’t enough. But it is Dad, and it was enough, it always will be. You didn’t just leave a mark in my life and in me. You left a mark in countless lives and countless people. You’re the definition of a hero Dad, and that? That’s always enough.
So thank you Dad. Thank you for being my light, and for guiding me in the darkest of places. Thank you for giving me a chance at life. And thank you for motivating me to write this story. I wish that I could write so much more about You and the life that you lived, but I can’t, so I hope that this is enough.
And Dad, don’t ever worry about me forgetting about you. I know that we don’t have any memories together, but I don’t need memories to remind me of who my father is. And I know that no matter what anybody says, you’re more than just a picture in a locket. You’re more than just a brown-eyed boy who wanted to make a change in the world and was that One out of a million who actually did. And Dad, you’re definitely more than a butterfly who flapped his wings and set off a storm a world away.
I love you Dad, to the moon and back, Always. I’ll see you at the finish line.
-A.
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