Saving Ashley

On September 26 of this last year a terrible tragedy shook my neighborhood.  I got the phone call around 11:00 am.  My close neighbor and friend’s son-in-law, Jarred, had been killed in a motorcycle accident on his way to work.  My heart jumped…my body shook…my limbs all of a sudden felt numb.  Even though I had only met Jarred just a handful of times, all I could think about is “What can I do?!, What do I do?!  I want to help.”  There is nothing that can make it go away, make it less hard, make it pass by faster.  Nothing.  You are left helpless.  I turned to God, and I just prayed.

A few months went by and I received a message from Ashley asking if I could do a photo session in honor of her late husband.  Immediately my mind went blank.  I am a newborn photographer.  Can I do this for her?  Should I be the one for her project?  I remembered my prayer to God.  The one where I asked him to protect the family, to give them strength, and “How can I help?”

This is how I am supposed to help, so I immediately went to work.  I have to say that the hardest part was sitting down with Ashley 1:1.  I met her at their house late one evening.  It was so cute, and nicely decorated.  It reminded me of my first house and how proud I was of it.  Molly, their puppy, greeted me at the door…from that point, it struck me.  This is going to be hard.  What do I say?  Am I going to say the wrong thing?  I pretended to be a journalist, getting any information that I could to make this request for Ashley exactly how she needed it to be.  I wanted this to be perfect.

“I saw that sweet boy’s face almost 1o years ago and immediately fell in love.  I was only 15 and didn’t really know what ‘love’ was,  but I knew in my heart that I would marry him.  Little did I know he had the same feelings I did on that very day.   As the years went by we were inseparable.  With a few ups and downs, we always worked it out.  Our love was real. He was always my one true love and my soul mate. Our love grew stronger with each passing day.

4/14/2013

We said the words we had been waiting our whole lives for.

‘I Do’

Our journey had just only begun. We did everything together and never did anything without the other. We just had to do it together.

We always knew what to say to the other to cheer them up or to encourage them or just to sit in silence. We were happy and blessed just to be in the same room with each other. We would not have gotten to where we were today if it wasn’t for each other. We had a beautiful home, a puppy, Jarred had a career he loved, and I was going to school to follow my dream. We were almost settled for life…

My life changed forever this Friday morning.  I was awoken by the doorbell ring at 9:15am.  In my pjs, I see two officers at my doorstep.  My head shook ‘no, no, no’  but they continued on to say the worst sentence I would ever hear in my life.  I fell to the floor and cried.  This is a dream, only a dream.  Little did I know I would never wake up from the nightmare.   Jarred was in a fatal motorcycle accident on his way to work where he died instantly at the very young age of 26. There was nothing anyone could do to save him.

I lost my soul mate, my one true love, my best friend, half of myself, and my husband of only a year and a half.  We planned to start a family this Winter and go on that honeymoon we never took after our wedding this Summer.

We had life-long plans that will never come true.

We will never get to celebrate our second wedding anniversary.

We will never get to watch our families grow.

We will never get to grow old together.

We will never, we will never, we will never…

As my world completely stopped the rest of the world didn’t. I was lost, afraid, alone and heartbroken. What was I going to do without him? We didn’t know what to do without one another.

Even though Jarred was taken from me, from us, in such a horrific way, he loved that bike and was so happy and free when he was riding it.  It brought me great joy to see that huge smile he had on his face while riding. I know that he left this earth doing something he just absolutely enjoyed and that brings a smile to my face.  He was always happy, and that always made me happy.

I can’t wait to hear his heartbeat next to mine, to kiss his lips again, and to make up for so much lost time…”