After four agonizing hours of waiting while the
river was dragged, Justin's body was finally recovered and
when they had him out of the water one of the officers walked
over to me and I looked at him and asked about holding him one
last time. I was told that he did not know if the EMT's would
permit it, so I calmly told him that if I brought my child
into this world then I would also hold him before they took
his body away from the place that he left this world. Nothing
more was said........I was led
over to the ambulance. I was given all the time in the world
and even Scot
(the one thing he did right) and the other children gave me
quite a bit of alone time with him.
I held him, I cuddled him, I cried and just as we count all
the fingers and toes on our newborns I counted all my new
angel's fingers and toes. Yes, girls the coldness was felt
into my own bones!!!!!!!!!! But, the thing that amazed me was
Justin had just learned to ride his bike without training
wheels the day before and had consequently run into a brick
wall so the last time I saw him alive he had bruises and scabs
all over his face, but there was no trace of them anywhere and
when I asked the EMT's they said that there
was no way that he wrecked the day before because there would
have been signs. One other thing that struck me as odd is that
when a person drowns the fear registers on their face but
Justin looked like he walked into an angel's arms because he
was smiling...............
> Then at the funeral home, we had an excellent director,
He happened to be the same man who took care of my grandfather
before I was even born, and he gave us all the time in the
world to prepare the body in whatever way we chose for his
final resting. Let me tell you this girls and please don't
take it wrong, we still laugh at how much Justin must be
cussing his family because that baby took so many toys into
heaven with him that we are sure he has no room to move around
in his casket.............no rolling over in
his grave, you know what I mean, right? Anyway to make matters
worse was Justin and Scotty ( his oldest brother) used to go
fishing together constantly (imagine a 15 year old coming home
to take his 4 year old brother fishing) and he thought it
would be fitting for him to have his fishing pole so
that went into his casket too. Then about three days later
Scotty jumped up
and looked at me and said Justin is going to hurt
himself............I forgot
to take the hook off of his pole.
I hope I haven't offended anyone with this
story I just wanted to tell it........sorry.
As I read this I wanted to share this
one last story and to thank all of you for reading and
meeting my angel.
When we had to make the arrangements
we were asked about the family limo and everyone had already
made the decision that all the guys would drive their tractors
(semi's) [my ex-husband, brother, and father were all truck
drivers] Now picture this first was the hearse and behind it
followed
three semi's and enough cars that in the two mile stretch from
church to
cemetery were solid cars. As the semi's were
pulling into the cemetery there were still people pulling out
of the church parking lot!!!!!!!!! Anyway when we got there
Michey jumped out of the Dad's truck, (he
refused to come home for two weeks afterwards because he knew
Justin wasn't there, so he stayed two blocks away with my mom
and dad) and he ran over to the grave side and plopped down at
the edge of the hole and kept asking everyone if Justin was
going to be sleeping there. And many more questions
too. I kept telling him to wait and I would tell him later
until finally my Pastor looked at Michey and said "If you
listen to me I will tell you" He then proceeded to teach
the graveside service to a very rapt three year
old and it was like there was no one else there. You would
have had to be there to understand but everyone afterward said
that it was through Michey's eyes that they understood the
loss.
Since Justin was buried on the third
of July, my brother and daddy wanted to
try and help my other boys deal with their pain so they spent
over $250 on fireworks for the fourth, but living in a small
town presented a slight problem...........curfew times. We
could light fireworks between 8 pm and 9:30 but at 9:30 we
still had not lit over half of what was bought so the
kids (I think we had the whole high school football team
there, since Scotty was Varsity football and insisted
on taking Justin to everyplace possible with him) kept
lighting them.
Around midnight the cops came by to tell the kids they had to
stop and of course the cops knew who's house it was and the
circumstances, but when I went outside to talk to them the
only thing they told me was that they were granting special
permission to us to light them all night if we wanted to as
long as
they had no complaints about the noise. Well everyone around
us knew what was going on so my kids had fireworks going until
3 am that morning.
I love all of you,
Love,
Lesly-Ann
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