Today, I trimmed hydrangea stems and placed their flowery purple heads into water-filled mason jars.
I needed a reminder that it's still summer.
This past week has felt like ice cold winter, with a horrific story on a continuous loop. For four families, it's more than a story, it's a never-ending nightmare.
As a mother, I have felt a connection and a pull to people whom I have never met, and whose loss I can't erase from my mind.
For days, we watched and waited for their boys to be found. We held out hope for them, feeling the proximity of their lives to ours. Their smiling young boys, our boys, any of ours.
In the midst of it all, we heard the disbelief of residents from the tiny Bucks County town where the tragedy occurred. Their selfish cries of 'things like that don't happen here' and 'not in my town' replacing the real story of these families whose lives were torn in two, never to be whole again.
This will forever be the summer of four boys who we all wished we could have saved.
Long after hydrangeas grow dormant and summer turns to fall, and the news vans leave town, I pray that they will begin to find their way to peace.
