Elijah - an Angel Story

Elijah's 4th Birthday.

Sometime circumstances mean that you are parted from your loved ones on special occasions. These occasions thankfully are rare. Not in my wildest dreams did I ever expect to be celebrating my son Elijah's birthday without him being present, for me at least not until I had gone before him. I don't expect the firsts of anything to be easy as many people have shared with me.

In preparation Julie and I wanted to make Elijah's 4th birthday a celebration of his life, Feb 7 is still Elijah's birthday even if he isn't with us in body to celebrate. So we arranged it so. We invited some close friends to join us at the cemetery to pray and to sing and then back to our house for chocolate cake and ice cream and we had some time with one of these families we shared some more time and food at a favourite eating place a place that we had celebrated together as families (with Elijah) before.

I didn't work on the 7th - just wasn't sure how i would be - I spent time making a wonderful chocolate cake - boy I know this was a favourite of Elijah - I watched him eat cake at his 3rd birthday at preschool for his 3rd and how he could hardly wait for it to be on the table let alone wait for the singing of Happy Birthday before he at least got his finger tips to the cake. I also spent some time in the afternoon preparing a DVD movie for his forth birthday. Recently I have become a big fan of the recording of somewhere over the rainbow as recorded by 'Iz' Israel Kamakawiwo Ole -

And so I spent time putting together some video from last year and photos of friends and family - we have so many photos of Elijah to choose from. Lots of tears as the final touches came together.

Julie and I went to pick up Francesca from the school and went to a balloon shop and got a bit helium filled yellow smiley balloon and a bit yellow balloon to write on for Eiljah.

We met our friends at the cemetery and had some time for chatting and sharing and some prayer and singing - " These are the days of Elijah"

Following that we had time together over gluten free wheat free chocolate cake and ice cream and watched the DVD movie I had prepared - I hope to break it down and upload to you tube some time soon. Over all it was a great celebration and we invited people to wirte greeting to Elijah on a big helium filled balloon which is now in the lounge by his picture.

It was a great celebration of Elijha's birthday !

One of the things that struck me was that the previous year as we had the year before that we prayed for Elijah and invited peole to lay hands on him and pray and in February 2007 I prayed "Lord let Elijah walk in this coming year before his next birthday and heal him Lord from his gentic condition" You know the Lord did answer my prayer bittersweet be it how he answered it. The days following Elijah's birthday and in fact the weekend was a time when I didn't feel like being around people and was really a malencolic time - time to cry and grieve.

As often I do I just felt the need to be closed to Elijah and to here him and to see him and so I spent quite a bit of time over the weekend watching snippets of him on video and some of his funeral. I guess there is a fear in me that I will forget what he sounds like. It's hard cause you can't hug televisions and so I hugged Francesca a bit more than ususal.

Elijah inspires me everyday.

Elijah I love you beyond words - continue to inspire your Daddy