In Memory of Erin Golding

So many thoughts traveling through my brain today. I am deviating from my timeline on this blog to write about something or I should say someone very important. I still have blogs I need to write to catch up to present day but as usual, falling behind, so kids...bare with me if the dates are confusing when you are reading this later. Today is Easter Sunday 2015. I should be celebrating. Celebrating Jesus and what he sacrificed for us. But I am not. I am mourning the death of someone who had so much life left to live. Erin was our nanny after the babies came home from the hospital. In fact, I am sure I have wrote about her before. She was always calling in sick which in turn meant I had to. Only later to find out she was very sick with bone cancer. That was 3 years ago in 2012. Last night she left this world. I am trying to wrap my head around why someone so young would have to go. I know that people, kids much younger die and it's never fair and it's always awful, every life lost before their time is crushing. There have been two times before this where I was reminded just how fragile life can be. The first was when I lost my dad before he could walk me down the aisle or meet my children. The second was when we were told 2 days after the babies were born that Jolynne needed surgery or she would die and there was a 50% chance she wouldn't survive the surgery. I watched my babies fight to live their first three months. They overcame and survived despite being born at 29 weeks but not without leaving me a little (or a lot) shook up.

 Today I am so sad, not for the loss I feel in my life, because admittedly Erin and I were not that close, but because I cared about her. I entrusted my babies lives with her in their most crucial time at home. Mickey was still having breathing and swallowing issues, Jolynne's tummy was still not 100% and we left them in her care every day as we went to work, and she kept our children safe, and she CARED for them. Today I am feeling sad that she never got the chance to have children of her own, or fall in love and get married or even decide with certainty what she wanted to do. I am feeling even more sad that because she was old enough to understand what was happening to her, she was probably well aware of all the things she wanted to do that she probably wouldn't be able to. There is a lot about Erin I don't know but what I do know is that she cared deeply for others. Different care givers over the years have felt a connection with one of the three triplets. At daycare, one of the teachers was in love with Georgia, in the hospital there was a nurse that adored Mickey. Erin instantly felt a connection to Jolynne. She commented soon after she started that she had a scar on her stomach just like Jo Jo's. Over the last couple years, she is quick to like or comment on a picture of Jolynne. It is nothing against the other too or that she cared for them less, it was simply an understanding of some things Jolynne had to go through in her early days, some similar experiences to her own I suppose. A new friend at church today asked me if I had any pictures of Erin with the kids and so I came home searching for at least one. There had to be one. She was with them every day, all day long but regretfully she was always the one taking the pictures. Erin sent me this picture a month ago of Jolynne and said "looking through old pics on my phone and saw this precious baby".

I am sad thinking about the cancer she had and that she spent the last couple years fighting for her life in her mid twenties while so many others were taking theirs for granted. I think about all the things I have got to do and the struggles I think I have when in fact they are nothing compared to what she had to struggle with. I am sad when I think about the fact that she had cancer but she died from the thing that was supposed to save her from it (chemotherapy), and the toll it took on her body. I think about all the recent conversations her and I have had about essentials oils and her strong interest in them. She said she hated pills, she hated that every time she left the hospital she felt weaker than when she went in and I wonder if she could have afforded the oils if they would have made a difference.

In the end I don't think its fair that Erin had to die at age 27. Today while we are singing in church and hunting Easter eggs with our children and enjoying meals with our loved ones, her parents are saying goodbye to their little girl, and her sister is saying goodbye to her best friend.

I know that Erin is in a better place and I should be clear there is a lot I do not know about her struggle or her last days and quite frankly its none of my business. But I want my kids to know someday that at this point they have had two nannies that loved them and took precious care of them. One of them was Erin Golding, and she would have been in their lives longer if she could have. I want them to know who she was and how precious life is. I want them to care for other people the way she cared for them. Rest in Peace Erin. We are grateful to have had you in our lives for a short time and blessed to have known you.