Love These Guys!!! --The Biglers & Starkes--

 Keith & Donna, Debbie & Joe

In April of this year (not 2009, like the pic says), Keith & Donna came to my brother's championship baseball game...which his team lost in extra innings...and we all had dinner afterwards.  It was an uplifting evening & felt so good to share each others company and talk about Azure as well as how life is going.

2 and 3 year olds are funny. They smile at the same time except for when you click the picture. : )  I still think Eric is cute, even though I wasn't fast enough to catch his smile.  Here's Eric Starkes & Tyson Borden at the chapel in Heber after my grandmother's funeral.

Brian & Ginger, if you're reading this, I hope you don't mind that I copied your thumbnail picture--I didn't have a picture of my own of your cute family!

There are few days in my life that I can recount in vivid detail.  Coming across Azure's car accident with my family and finding her baby in the car made for a day in my life that is as vivid as my wedding day, as poignant for my life as the birth of my children. I can remember the expressions on people's faces, I can remember what the wind felt like as I held Eric, I can remember the slow motion of watching as everyone who could do anything tried to help to save her life.  I remember everyone comforting each other (my husband, Melodie, my mom, strangers), I remember a young couple I do not know, but who stood nearby watching.  On Wednesday, it'll be three years since she died, but I think about Azure and her family often--not just during this time of year.

The second we came upon the scene we were praying.  We were all hoping for a miracle--we wanted a story where we'd be reuinited at a later time after she was taken in the air-vac to find out that the CPR worked.  We wanted her family to get to keep her & have a long full life with her.  I wonder about that and why the miracle we hoped for wasn't meant to be, and then I remember Eric.  I believe that he was Azure's miracle.  The only thing wrong with him was that he had dirt in his eyelashes, so my mom helped me wipe some of the dirt away.  After a car flips 10 times and glass is shattered, you can't tell me it isn't a miracle that he was calm and completely unscathed.  I just feel lucky I got to hold him that day.  It's what his momma would have done if she could have.

I get worn out being a mom sometimes--especially when I'm low on sleep, when my house is a wreck, and when my kids get sick.  A few months ago I was really down on myself feeling like I hadn't accomplished anything worthwhile and while I was lying down with my kids to help them fall asleep my mind was on all the things I still needed to do, and I had the thought come to me like it was Azure saying: "Just hold your kids.  I don't get to do that right now--I only get to watch from a distance.  And this time doesn't last very long. Just hold your babies."

I've always wondered about all the similar connections Brian & Azure's life had to mine & Mitch's.  We have so many things in common: we were married for the same amount of time, we both tried to have kids but miscarried before we could have them, Brian & I have both taught 6th grade, we both had baby boys first who were just months apart, and we even had the same brand of carseat so that when Mitch pulled Eric out of the car it was quick & with ease.  Our lives to that point were very similar & we were just learning what it means to have a family of your own in the great journey of marriage and parenthood.

So here we are, 3 years later.  I love the Bigler's & Starkes.  It might sound odd, but it's healing for me and my family to see them doing well.  It makes me happy to see Brian with Ginger as they build a life together and have more children.  It makes me happy to visit with Keith and Donna and to feel the strength of their testimonies of the resurrection.  And it makes me happy every time I see Eric.  I don't know if he'll ever understand the way I feel when I see him--I just love that adorable little guy, and I think I know how his mom feels about him.  He's her miracle.

A video with Azure in it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCd8p9WlVIU