Precious Memories

 

  “Can Jazz and I go see a movie after school?” Roderick texted me one day.

   “If Tyler and Angeline want to see it too you guys can come too” he added.

   I checked into it and bought tickets for all of us then texted Roderick that we’d all go together.

   “I really wanted this to be only Jazz and I” he texted me.

   “You said we could all go.”

   “I only did that to be nice.”

   “You shouldn’t have said that if you didn’t mean it.”

   I told him Jazz and him were welcome to sit by themselves somewhere and we wouldn’t bother them but that I had already bought tickets so we would go too. 

   Before school was over for the day he texted me saying, “mom, family is important too, we can all go together.”  Roderick was always so willing to apologize especially to the people he cared about.

   Memories are so precious now that that is all we have.  Three weeks ago I went through Roderick’s room, up until then I had left it the way it was.  I replaced the carpet and got it ready so Tyler could use it as his computer room.  I didn’t find it that hard at the time but the following two weeks were hard ones, it seemed tears were on the surface all the time.  Then on Monday it seemed like the heaviness lifted all of a sudden.  I had days that were hard and days that were easier but to actually feel the heaviness lift was something I hadn’t experienced before.  God works in unexpected ways. Now I really enjoy going into the family room downstairs where I'm surrounded by so many momentums that bring back memories.

  We had some display cabinets in the Family Room downstairs where Roderick spent so much of his time. We hung the framed Jersey up on one wall on the other wall I hung his framed medals and ribbons and I had a posture printed to go in between.  In the display cabinet I put his collection of knives on one shelf, his trophies on another his personal belongings like wristwatch, wallet, etc. on another and so forth.  I'm glad I did that even if it was painful.

Words on Posture: Roderick was always a strong competitor, whether it was track and field, winning ribbons: hockey, winning medals or back yard wrestling matches, he would always fight hard and give it his best shot until the very end.  You won the race buddy, you did well, I'll meet you at the finish line when I get there.  -Stanton Rempel 

 I wanted to write about memories this week so I went through a lot of memories that his friends shared and I really enjoyed it.  There are so many great memories I can’t share nearly all of them but I will share some of them here and hopefully I can share more later on.

Friends Remember

I remember whenever he got his quad stuck and I was with him he would always make me go off of it and push it out of the mud.  I also remember he got the truck stuck in a ditch at the farm and also made me push it but he was such a great guy and always knew how to make me smile.  He honestly made me so happy and always showed how he cared even if it meant punching me or making fun of me. 

Roderick was the most funniest, craziest and most adventurous guy I have ever met.  Once he grabbed my arm and almost pushed me near the fire, he grabbed me back so I wouldn’t fall and scared me so bad.

He was always eating food when I was around him, every time I would be hungry he would offer me a sandwich or a juice box.  Even though he always punched and pushed me and annoyed me at the end of the day he always helped me with my problems and never pushed me away.

He taught me how to be confidant in who I am.  I remember telling my mom I was inviting a friend over and they expected him to be a girl and when he walked in my mom whispered to me "is that a girl?" Thanks for reminding me I was beautiful when no one else was.

I remember when I first came to MBCI the first person I talked to was Rod.  He instantly accepted me into his group of friends.  Later that week he threw me in the bushes for no reason.  We frequently had all out wrestling matches, the last one was just a week before him leaving, that was the last time we had a lot of fun together.

Last year at service day the Chaplin commissioned Roderick and me to find this smell and promised us $5.00.  After searching for an hour and a half we determined it was the garbage.  We took out the garbage and the guy gave us two halves of a five-dollar bill.

You and a friend were shooting bb guns and I told you not to shoot me but you did anyway and the next day at school I had a whole  bunch of welts on my hand where you shot me.  I will never forget you, you were so amazing.

Sup Rod.  It’s you spare buddy. Man it was so awesome having you in my spare.  I wouldn’t have asked for anyone besides you.  We did so many dope things during our spare.  From climbing bridges to skateboarding to trying to make fish nets out of things we found by the riverbank.  From the day of our first spare I would look forward to chilling with you cause I knew we would do something exciting no matter what the situation was. 

At Red Rock some friends and I were in a paddle boat and got stuck in some seaweed.  We weren’t able to get out without getting wet so you volunteered to get us out.  When you untangled our boat from the weeds and got out of the water you had bad scars all over.  You never let me forget that day and what you went through to get us out.

I remember when we were in gym and I was standing on the ledge by the workout room and you came up behind me and like pushed me but held onto me so I didn’t fall and after you said “I just saved you life!"  I remember the funny faces you would make randomly at me.

Heaven is Real

  

Heaven is such a wonderful place.  I have read a lot about heaven since Roderick’s accident and I can tell you heaven seems more real to me then ever, even though it’s hard to grasp with our human minds.  I’ve also read a lot of NDEs (Near Death Experiences) like ‘Heaven is for Real’; I think that one has blessed me the most.  I hesitated to read these because I wasn’t sure if they would be more confusing then encouraging with all the conflicting beliefs and experiences.  Then when we attended Grief Share our Leader Angela said she had read all about heaven after the death of her mother and it helped so much to imagine heaven, she said some of the stuff out there doesn’t agree with the Bible so just throw that out but don’t hesitate to read, so I did. 

   Later when someone saw me read a book like that I was challenged whether I believed that I said, “I won’t argue whether it is true or not but it helps me imagine Roderick in heaven and that is why I read it”.  I do believe when People that believe in Jesus die they go to heaven so I have no problem believing that some of these experiences are real, now some are weird and don’t seem to agree with God’s Word so those I just dismiss. 

   The one thing that they all have in common is how they feel the love of God like they’ve never experienced here on earth.  They’ve never felt so loved before.  We sometimes question how Roderick can be happy without his loved ones, we are after all his family or even if he is happy how can he not feel for us and want to return to comfort us.  This revelation has helped me a lot; he feels loved like he’s never felt loved before but not just that, he now sees that love surrounding us too.  He knows that with God’s love surrounding us we are cared for with a kind of love that he cannot give us here on earth.  In ‘Heaven is For Real’ Colton mentions that he has seen the Holy Spirit shoot power down when his dad preached.  I think about that a lot, God shows His love in so many different ways and if every time we are sad Roderick sees God comfort us or send people our way or all the different things God does, why should he have a desire to come back to us when he knows that he can do very little compared to what he sees the perfect God with the perfect love do for us. 

   Now again I’m not trying to make this Gospel but I do know the Lord can use other people’s experiences to comfort us and I also know that I cannot imagine God’s love to great, it’s still always greater then I can imagine.

    I often struggle with how to word the fact that Roderick has left us, I know we haven’t lost him, if heaven is real then he’s just moved to heaven and if your child moves to a different country you haven’t lost that child, I often say he has left us because he has gone to live in heaven but in a sense he is still always with us.  So even though I don’t know how to word it I do know the more real heaven becomes to us the more real Roderick stays to us.  We will always have three children even if one of them moved to heaven.  The pain of the separation needs to heal and eventually we get used to the fact that Roderick no longer lives with us but he’s still real and he still lives in heaven.  Roderick is not gone. The reason Roderick‘s moving to heaven is so painful for us is because all communication as we know it in the physical sense is cut off.  Hundred years ago when we couldn’t communicate with everyone around the world like we can today when a family member would move to a different country the separation would be almost unbearable at first because there wasn’t a way to communicate very well but eventually they got used to it.  So it is with Roderick moving to heaven even though the separation hurts a lot right now we will eventually get used to the fact that he lives in heaven but he will always still be our son and very much alive. 

   I am convinced that if we could see the Joy and happiness on his face in heaven right now that alone would take some of the sadness away that we feel when we think of such a happy energetic young man having to leave this earth much to early but we can’t see him, all connection we have with him now is by faith and thank God we have that faith.  I found this paragraph in Roderick's binder which he has written in grade 10, his last school year.  I'm not sure what the assignment was but I thought I'd share it.  Shows his simple faith.  
 
   I have never doubted God's existence and his love for me because that's what I grew up believing.  My parents taught me from when I was very young that God loves me and sent his only son to die for me.  I have never really questioned if God existed.  He has proven to me a couple times that there is a God watching over me.  There have been times where an accident should've happened to me but somehow it didn't.  My Grandparents have always believed in a God.  So have my parents and everyone in my family so I've just grown up with it and never questioned it.  -Roderick

Our Strength

  

“You guys are so strong” is one thing we here over and over.  Obviously it’s our Saviour that gives us strength but He does it through all of you who are always there to give us another boost.  We have so many caring people surrounding us there is no room to fall, when we sway there is someone there to quickly put an arm around us and help us stand. 

   Everyone who has brought us a meal is like a hand held out to steady us.  I have a friend from church online that will just mentions that he is reading my blog, another hand reached out giving support.  Some take us out for coffee, paying for my daughter’s Slurpee, stopping by to visit, going to Roderick’s gravesite, wearing the Roderick Rempel tournament shirt to include Roderick on the first day of school, wearing Roderick’s hockey number on the helmet to honour Roderick, sharing memories of Roderick, listening to us talk about Roderick and our struggles since, that’s a big one, listening and allowing us to talk and so many other things.  Talking about it is such therapy.  If we have only two friends that we can share with it isn’t long until we’ve said it all but if we have a 100 friends we can say the same thing over a hundred times and every time it relieves some of the pain. 

   I know that most of you don’t know what a difference your caring acts have made, whether they are big or small.  Some of you might think that your small caring act has probably been lost among the hundreds and that we don’t know how much you actually care and I’m sad to say that there might be those actions that we have missed but I still know even if we might have forgotten they have still helped us continue on, but I will also say there are many small acts that I still often think about and know that the person who did that has no idea what a huge difference they made. 

   There are a couple things though that I want to mention here that have touched me deeply.  Cooper Nemeth’s family, whom we do not know and have never met, less then a month after they buried the body of their own son, they heard about Roderick’s accident and stopped by with a whole box of frozen meals, I have to this day not met them, I have asked for their address to contact them but haven’t got it yet.  In their pain they reached out to comfort us. 

   Roderick’s cousin got married on mother’s day.  Him and his bride decided to honour Roderick on their wedding.  They had small photos of Roderick attached to all their bouquets, then instead of throwing the bouquet to the single ladies they gave it to me for mother’s day in memory of Roderick.  That touched us very deeply, on their special day which was suppose to be all about them besides a wedding is suppose to be a happy celebration but they allowed us all to cry for Roderick that was to me a huge sacrifice they made and indeed very generous of them.  

   When I was in youth I had a friend that was about 5 years older then me who lost her husband suddenly.  She gave me some books to read that were written by other young widows and after reading those I was always afraid to go up to someone who had lost a loved one for fear of offending them because I had no idea what it was like or what would be appropriate to say.  We do not find that so.  A lot of people do not know what to say and that is completely fine because we don’t know what to say either.  Even though some of you might think you’ve said the wrong thing I do not feel like that.  I can feel the love and the care so deeply I do not focus on words that might have come out a bit wrong or different then intended.   

   Being strong is a part of who Roderick is.  Everyone who knew him knew his physical strength and now we need to be strong for him.  Don’t they say one way of overcoming grief is to live for our loved one?  Roderick was strong now we need to be strong for him.  Another gift that Roderick had was to overcome offences quickly.  He did not waste time holding grudges.  I remember when Roderick was a toddler I saw another toddler following a kid around upset that this kid had taken a toy that he wanted.  Roderick was not like that.   If someone took his toy from him he would just quickly give him or her a punch or a shove and then it was over.  I remember saying if I could get to him and hold onto his hand before he hit then he had already forgiven.  He lived life like that, he often acted before he thought and that got him in trouble many times but he was just as quick to forgive and be friends again. 

   I remember Roderick was so upset at his dad one time because Jake wouldn’t allow him to do something he really wanted.  Later when he came back into the room I asked him if he was still upset.  He said, “no because I’ve learned the only one I’m hurting when I’m angry with dad is myself”.

   So thanks to all of you for loving us, caring for us, supporting us and praying for us and thereby helping us to be strong.  Thanks for surrounding us with so much support that there is no room to fall.  We are so blessed by all of you.