Love isn’t always a butterflies in your stomach, abandoned all logic feeling of angst. The older I get, and perhaps just a little wiser, I have discovered that love doesn’t come at you with a feeling of uneasiness. It can be as simple as a conversation with someone in a red hat leaning on a fence on a warm spring night. A person you haven’t talk to in months and what your saying isn’t what you want to say but you can see in their eyes that they know and understand. Love holds your hand and supports you when the world says your wrong but you just know you’re right. It doesn’t end just because you cant see or hear it, it sticks with you when it shouldn’t, gives a little more than it should and helps dry your tears. I no longer believe that love has to tie you up in knots, I now know that it’s purpose is to gently untangle you with comfort and a sigh of relief.


Tell me who admires you and loves you, and I will tell you who you are.
- Charles Augustin Sainte-Beauve



Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate;only love can do that. - Martin Luther King



A loving heart is the truest wisdom. - Charles Dickens

I know, I know I have heard, read, and been told that everyone grieves differently. People all experiencing the same loss can move away from the pain and toward acceptance more swiftly than others and each one of us find a place for this tremendous loss in our own time. Sounds great in theory but as Christmas approaches and I am in the thick of grief I am finding it infuriating. Everyone around me seems to have this attitude of getting back to normal, moving forward or just getting on with it. I keep asking myself, in an effort to follow suit, what normal was and what it would take to get back there? For me normal was starting my Christmas shopping in November, counting presents to make sure each child had the same number, done in an effort to avoid another feud. Wrapping packages for days and sending Jeremy to get batteries at 11 o’clock on Christmas Eve. Baking cookies with my Three Amigos special for St. Nick and begging them to go to sleep so Santa wouldn’t skip our house. Waking up at 6 to screams of delight and watching there expressions as wrapping paper covered the floor like confetti. The joy, the laughter…the Holiday. That normal can never be achieved for me again. Just the site of a Christmas tree in the mall brings me instantly to tears, I shop for yard art for my Son’s memorial classroom instead of a new bike or the exact Xbox game on the scribbled letter to Santa. I hurt, I feel angry and as much as I want my normal it’s unobtainable and as everyone finds their new normal I still struggle with a lonely longing for my old one.

The lessons I have learned over the past seventeen months are many. I’m not sure however if any of them are useful. I know now that it takes two hours to paint a bedroom and that the detailed work makes a wonderful distraction from life’s torments. I know that it takes a week to read a book and you can momentarily loose yourself in another world that’s thankfully not your own. I know that it takes a matter of hours to fly to anywhere you want to be but you always carry the pain with you weather you intentionally pack it or not. I have discovered it takes about three weeks to recover from a lost love and about the same amount of time to believe you might have found another spark…but I still don’t know how to fill this empty space left behind by the loss of my Son. It is a hollow, dark, raw open hole that stitches wont adequately mend, possessions don’t make a dent in its depths and as the minutes turn to hours then days and the days become months then seasons pass it is still within me. My heart peeks out waiting for me to figure it out and I don’t have the answer. The weather changes from warm to cool and the butterflies are replaced by falling leaves and I watch and wait for the answer to the one question that perplexes me time and time again. One thing I know for sure; most of our dilemmas can be figured out, overcome or dealt with but the scars of some of life’s battles will just remain in wait for us, maybe not to figure out, but perhaps to accept.

I was realizing yesterday just how many of life’s little celebrations have become obstacles. J.T died on Friday . Friday, once a day of relief for the end of the week, is now an obstacle that I must pack up my trunk of existence and overcome. His Birthday, September 19th, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas…All days that once held the excitement of tradition and are now days that must all be merely survived. The more I speak to parents who have suffered the same loss the more I grasp that this feeling is universal. Lives that were once celebrated are now survived. Just one of life’s many gifts, taken with the loss of a child. Yes we find new ways to extract the joys out of life but its no longer as simple as just existing it now takes a great effort, focused intent, daily prayer for peace, and a stubborn will to make life worth living.

“This week a story about the Rhino ran front page in the Wall Street Journal . There have been several Spin-offs of that story running in papers today. I am pleased that it is bringing awareness to the accidents and deaths caused by the Rhino. Hopefully this awareness will help save other families from the painful path mine and that of other victims are on. -Heidi”



Here is one of those stories:
Date Published: Tuesday, November 4th, 2008

Federal safety officials are investigating the Yamaha Rhino, a popular off-road-vehicle that has been linked to 30 deaths. Unfortunately, the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) has not set safety standards for vehicles like the Rhino, which it classifies as a utility terrain vehicle, or UTV. Another class of off-roaders, all terrain vehicles (ATVs), are subject to safety standards.

While off-road vehicles are involved in hundreds of accidents every year, critics say the Yamaha Rhino ATV is even more likely to be involved in one particular type of mishap - rollover accidents. They charge that the Yamaha Rhino is top heavy, and it has tires that are extremely narrow. These design defects make it far more likely that the Yamaha Rhino will tip and rollover while going through a turn, even when the vehicle is traveling at a slow speed and is on a flat surface. Furthermore, the Yamaha Rhino is designed in such a way that passengers’ legs are unprotected in the event of a rollover accident.

Victims of Yamaha Rhino rollover accidents usually experience broken or crushed legs, ankles or feet. In some cases, victims have been permanently disabled, and have had limbs amputated following a Yamaha Rhino rollover accident. When Yamaha Rhino rollover accidents involve children, the results are often fatal. Just last month, two little girls were killed in such a Yamaha Rhino accident.

Critics of Yamaha has say the company has been slow to acknowledge the Rhino ATVs rollover problems since the vehicles were first introduced in 2003. In September 2006, Yamaha Motor Corp. sent a letter to the owners of Rhino ATVs warning that the Rhino was prone to tip while going through sharp turns. However, the wording of the Yamaha letter seemed to place much of the blame for Rhino rollover accident injuries on the victims themselves. Yamaha warned passengers of the Rhino ATVs to use seatbelts, and to keep their hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. The letter also included information on handling the Rhino if it should start to tip over. But since Yamaha sent the 2006 letter, it has become increasingly apparent that the actions recommended by Yamaha do little to protect passengers involved in Rhino rollover accidents.

It wasn’t until 2007 that Yamaha appeared to finally take the Rhino’s safety issues seriously. At that time, the company offered free modifications to the owners of new and used Rhinos. These modifications included the addition of doors to the ATV, as well as additional handholds.

The CPSC decision to investigate the Yamaha Rhino was based on reports of accidents and deaths involving the vehicle, as wells as the high number of product liability suits - 200 - filed by people who claim they were injured by the Rhino. Vehicles like the Rhino aren’t classified as ATV because of design differences such as having a steering wheel, in contrast to the ATVs’ handlebars. But neither are off-road vehicles subject to the much-tougher standards for cars.

Yamaha continues to stand-by the Rhino, and says it voluntarily complies with some federal standards for vehicle parts, such as seat belts. It also appears that Yamaha and other makers of UTVs are trying to head-off mandatory safety standards by proposing their own voluntary rules. Last year, Yamaha and other makers of the vehicles formed the Recreational Off Highway Vehicle Association, which will set those standards.

But critics of the Yamaha Rhino are still pushing for mandatory standards. Earlier this year, Congress passed such safety rules for ATVs, and they go into effect in April. Proponents of mandatory standards for UTVs say such similar rules would allow the CPSC to act quickly if it spots an apparent safety problem, because a failure to meet the standard can lead to a recall or civil penalty.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 4th, 2008 at 7:16 am and is filed under Legal News, Accident.