When I walked outside this evening to take out the trash, I noticed how beautiful the sky was. The sun had set quite a bit earlier and only a little light remained. The storm clouds that had been lingering for two days now were painted pink and it looked like Heaven. It struck me so much that I went inside to get Eleanor so we could look at the sky together.

We stood there in the driveway with the wind blowing around us, looking up at Heaven. I told her that’s where her daddy was, and that he was looking down on her.

The tall pines across the cul-de-sac were swaying slowly in the wind and lightening branched out just to the east of the patch of pink.

As I stood there with Eleanor in the sling that Ted bought me for my birthday, I looked up to the pink clouds and found myself asking Ted if we could just go ahead and join him. The words left my lips before I thought too long on it and I immediately found myself doubting whether or not I really meant it. After all, our family had suffered a tragedy of a lifetime with losing Ted; wishing that we could be taken from this earth to go join him felt somewhat selfish.

Still, as I watched the lightening moving closer, I couldn’t quite pull myself from the driveway. As I lingered there, I thought, if God wanted to, he could call us home in an instant…and the three of us would be together once more. There would be no more pain, no more suffering. We would be a family again.

But he didn’t.

Instead, we went back inside and I began getting Eleanor’s dinner ready. Since I didn’t let her have a second pouch of snacks, she had a small tantrum on the kitchen floor. After a few seconds of crying and calling my name, she switching to calling for Ted. Daga, Daga. Evidently, she was hoping that he would come in and make everything better, just like he used to.

If only. If only he could walk through that front door, all would be right in our little world.