Anyway, when she returns, she has this strange look on her face.
“The strangest thing just happened to me tonight.”
“Really? What was it?”

And she proceeds to tell me about her shopping trip. While at the store, there was a middle-aged(mid-fifties) couple inside asking for assistance from other shoppers…. apparently in vain. Amy decides to do the right thing(I am very proud!) and help these people out. Apparently, the couple was from out of town and wasn’t familiar with the grocery store – or where to find things. So Amy helped them locate the items they needed and struck up a conversation with them. Once they had found all they were looking for, they continued to walk and talk with Amy until she had finished her shopping as well. So the three of them arrive at the check-out counter together.

Looking into her cart, she realizes that she had many more items than the couple, and insisted that they go ahead of her in line. They thanked her, checked out their items, and hung around talking with her while her items were being processed. When it was time for Amy to pay her bill, the man pulled out a hundred-dollar bill and offered to pay for all of her things! Amy tried to politely decline, but the man insisted! When she told him that he didn’t have to do that, he said that he did, and as they walked together to the parking lot, he explained why…

Apparently, this couple had a son who had recently been killed in Afghanistan while serving our country. The loss was devastating to them and the father was having an especially hard time trying to make sense of it all…
“There is so much cruelty in the world today… I had begun to wonder if our son had died in vain.”
Trying to find the answer, he and his wife packed their vehicle and began searching for acts of kindness. Anything to give him hope of a better future…. Anything to give meaning or substance to his son’s death.

Amy was the very first act of kindness that they had encountered. When she expressed her gratitude for them paying her grocery bill, he expressed it to her in return…. for giving him hope… for being a symbol of why his son had to die. As they were parting ways, the man turned and asked Amy what she did for a living…
“Why, I’m a schoolteacher,” she said.
“That – in itself- gives me even more reason to believe that my son didn’t die for nothing.”

[tags]kindness, parenthood[/tags]

Since that time, she has picked up a summer job as a hostess at The Right Rescipe – a local restaurant owned by a friend, gotten her driver’s license(South Carolina drivers be forewarned!), and was accepted to attend Coastal Carolina. She has spent the rest of the summer trying to get moved into the upstairs bedroom and painting the walls of the upstairs living area. I think she’ll be ready to make the complete move in a couple more days.

In the meantime, Amy and I have had to get adjusted to her not being around as much. We had heavily relied on her to help out around the house and watch the two boys when we needed to run errands or whenever we had “date night.” Now that she will be having job, school, and mostly car, she’ll have other things that will keep her busy.

Another adjustment we have had to make is allowing her to have more freedom. This has been the toughest thing to adjust to, but I think it is happening – Slower than Victoria would like, but it is happening.

This weekend, he made it quite clear that maybe he was lacking some quality time with his parents. He basically spent the whole weekend under Amy’s elbow, or cuddled with her in the chair. I wish I could have spent some time with him, but I had to work again this weekend. I can’t begin to tell you the guilt that washes over me when I peek into his bedroom at night and check on him. I plan to make it up to him on Saturday. I think he and I will go on one of our “man trips.” The only problem is that it won’t last as long as our usual trips, because I have to work again this Sunday.

Hey, Dad? If you’re reading this… I just wanted to tell you that I’m sorry. Until now, I never really understood.

But… she’s still just a teenager, and since I’m her Dad, and because I love her, I will always want to protect her from whatever evil lurks in the shadows. No parent wants their kids to make the same mistakes that they did as a kid… and believe me, if there was a mistake to be made, I made it. There is such a feeling of helplessness as you watch your child walk out of the door, knowing that you cannot always be there to protect her. The only thing you can do is say a silent prayer to God, that she has taken the years of advice to heart, and when the time comes, she remembers some of it and puts it to good use.

Anyway… she came home on time. Said she had a blast and then told me what they did and where they went…. Then the parent kicks in and I wonder to myself if I’ve heard the whole story… Probably not(as a few more hairs fall out of my head).

Whatever it is, Mr. Dungy left quite a few words of wisdom for both parents and their kids when he spoke at his son’s funeral today.

Note: All Quotes taken from the ESPN article

“Parents hug your kids every chance you get,” he said. “Tell them you love them every chance you get because you don’t know when it’s going to be the last time.”

“My daughter Tiara said it best the other day. She said: ‘I just wish he could have made it until he was 20. Because when you’re 17 or 18, sometimes the things you guys say to us don’t always make sense. … When I got to 20, they started making sense again.”‘

(While addressing his players)
“I want to urge you to continue being who you are because our young boys in this country, they need to hear from you,” he said. “If anything, be bolder in who you are. Because our boys are getting a lot of the wrong messages about what it means to be a man in this world. About how you should act, and how you should dress, and how you should talk, and how you should treat people. They don’t always get the right message, but you guys have the right messages.”

He recalled Thanksgiving, which was the last time he saw his son, as the teen rushed off to the airport.

“I said, ‘I’ll see you later.’ I didn’t get to hug him. I knew I’d see him again pretty soon, so it didn’t really bother me very much,” Dungy said.

“We talked on the phone a lot the last few days. We’re always talking about what was going to happen. The last few days he was saying — as the guys on the team know he would — he was saying: ‘Dad, we’re going to the Super Bowl, and when we do, will I be on the field?’”…

…”And I said: ‘Yeah, man. You know the hard part is getting there, but if we do, you know you’re going to be on the field.’ … But I never got to hug him again. That’s one thing I’ll always think about and always remind people to do: Hug ‘em every chance you get.”

There seems to be so much in life that we tend to take for granted. So do yourself a favor and let the people closest to you know that you care. It doesn’t matter if it “seems a little silly,” or “might embarrass you.” You never really know if you’ll get the chance to do it again…

“Hug ‘em every chance you get.”

No parent should ever have to bury their child

I’ll be praying for you and your family, Mr Dungy.