Death is brutal in its finality...

I haven't posted on this blog in a long time. My girls grew up, went off to college , graduated and moved out to start their own lives. So I wasn't being confronted with the day to day struggles of children in the public school system. The recent death of my nephew who was like a son to me got me thinking about our roles as parents. We are always parents to our children no matter how old they are and where life takes them. My nephew was 42 and he died of cardiac arrest brought on by kidney failure. We were in the process of organizing an effort to find a kidney donor for him but he didn't make it. His name was Kirk and he was wonderfully talented and charismatic. He made a lot of decisions in his life that I didn't agree with and which held him back from reaching his full potential. I tired tough love with him because I didn't want to enable him in his bad decision making. Looking back now I wish I had made sure he knew that while I was rejecting some of his bad decisions I was in no way rejecting him. I hope he knew how much I loved him and how proud I was of his efforts to get his life back on track. Parents if you have a difficult child and you have decided to use tough love so that you don't enable destructive behavior, please let your children know how much you love them. Please let them know that you don't reject them, let them know that they are precious and that they matter to you. Death is brutal in its finality. After they are gone it is too late.