Broken Dreams

When you lose someone you love, you not only lose that person but also any hopes and dreams you had for the future with them.

Every time we get a piece of mail from another college encouraging Micah to come and check out their school, it’s a bitter reminder that he’ll never get to experience college life or choose a career. When I see one of his friends around the community, working at their job, playing in the band, or having fun with friends, I’m reminded of all that he missed out on with them. I love seeing his friends as it reminds me of times they spent together but it also brings realizations of what Micah will never get to experience.

One day I stumbled across an airline napkin with Annika’s handwriting scrawled across it. As I examined it more closely, I realized that it was a napkin from the last leg of her return flight from her Europe trip, from Iceland to Minneapolis, the trip she was making to say her final good-bye to Micah. She had composed two lists on that napkin, one naming things that Micah would never get to do and the other, the things that she wouldn’t get to do with him. It broke my heart to read those lists.

Things Micah Will Never Get to Do:

• Drive a car on a real road (not just driving down Grandma’s driveway)
• Go to prom
• Graduate from High School
• Go to College
• Have his first kiss
• Fall in love
• Get married
• Have Kids
• Tease Annika about being old

Things Annika Won’t Get to Do with Micah:

• Teach him how to drive
• Go on their cousin trip
• Have their kids grow up together
• Raise kids together
• Get to experience their relationship as adults
• Have him at her wedding
• Get to tell him how important he is to her

Both lists continued but it’s clear how much Annika’s life will be different without him. She went from having a brother who was pretty much always there, to feeling like an only child. All of the things they had planned for their future have been washed away like a sandcastle being swept away by a wave.

There are so many things in life that we take for granted. We put off things thinking that we will get to them when there’s more time, when we’re older, or when we retire. The trouble with that is sometimes tomorrow never comes. Sometimes life takes us on a different path.

Losing Micah has taught me that we need to live each day to the fullest. We need to live for the moment, enjoying life as it comes, and cherishing the people in our lives because none of us knows what the future holds.