My story is one of love and heart ache that will teach us all a beautiful lesson about life, love and the pursuit of happiness. When I met my boyfriend I had the honor to meet his amazing mother over the phone and through the mail as she lived in South Carolina. We grew a great relationship but I knew my time with her was short due to her terminal
...Read MoreRead more about My story is one of love and heart ache illness and I was determined to make the best of it. One Thursday night we got the call from Lisa (my boyfriend's mother) saying it is time I need you both to come now. That next night we were on our way to SC to spend the next week with her. Every day that we stepped in her hospital room she always loved to smell flowers but at this point she could not walk to them. So each day for that week I would empty the water and my boyfriend would hand her, the now lighter vase, to smell all of her flowers. One vase at a time we enjoyed this somehow timeless process and enjoyed the moment, it was so precious. I do not remember which day but my heart was hurting and I remember thinking to myself, from this point and forever on I need to honor her by stopping to always smell the flowers. Life gets in the way and it gets so busy that I think we all forget, no matter how sick she was and how much pain she was in she stopped to smell them. She taught me an amazing lesson. One day when the time was getting closer my boyfriend and I went to the gift shop to find her some more flowers I looked in a glass case just to take a mental break and was staring straight at the warm embrace of a beautiful willow figure. I broke down and the second my boyfriend saw what I was looking at, this beautiful figurine smelling the flowers, he broke down too. It was an amazing and healing moment for him and me, and we brought her home. Now that Lisa has passed and is in a better place I look at our Willow Tree every day and remember so many wonderful lessons in life and this beautiful woman that I was blessed to know, even if for a very short moment. Read LessRead less about My story is one of love and heart ache