There are things that happen in our lives that we can not explain. There are things that happen in our lives that will stay with us forever and today is that day for me. 5 years ago today, my mother in law was killed in a tragic car accident. There are things about that day that I can tell you about, but a lot of it is a blur, but here are some of the things that I do remember:

• I remember that it was snowing and had started snowing earlier that morning.
• I remember getting the phone call from my father in law while I was sitting at work after lunch..
• I remember listening to Mark Schultz’s Remember Me when the phone rang.
• I remember sitting back down, putting my head down and crying. Crying for the loss of an amazing person, but crying because I was going to have to go and tell my wife of 3 months that her mother and best friend had just died and it was going to break my wife’s heart. It was going to change her forever.It was going to change us.
• I remember the 8 miles from my office to my wife’s seemed like 180 miles.
• I remember calling my wife’s best friend and telling him, as he was a 2nd child to my wife’s parents.
• I remember not being able to talk for 10 minutes and only being able to cry in front of my wife.
• I remember my wife asking if we were getting a divorce, because I could not stop crying. That would have been easier I think.
• I remember the drive from my wife’s office to her Dad’s house seemed like forever.
• I remember her father coming outside when we got there to hug my wife and myself.
• I remember a family friend that grabbed me and held me as tight as he could, and I finally got to grieve for a few minutes.
• I remember the outpouring of people that came to the house that night.
• I remember waking up after 15 minutes of sleep and having a feeling of calmness come over me.
• I remember the silence in the house.

Here is the song by Mark Schultz, Remember Me, that I was listening to when I got the call, that Monday afternoon.

Sometimes things do not make sense, especially when death is involved. I can say that after a lot of struggles, my wife and I learned a lot of amazing lessons from this. My wife and I are closer. My wife and I have two amazing little boys. My wife my and I often talk about that day. We talk about what we were doing, we often cry and then  we talk about how much we miss her mom. We talk about how she would be with the boys and how much she would have loved them.

But tonight, I just think that we have to look for the Remembrance of God in the form of sunsets and people. We have to take each moment as it is our last. We have to over use the words “I Love You”, because you never know when it will be the last time that you will use them.

Remember me
When the color of the sunset fills the sky
Remember me
When you pray and the tears of joy
fall from your eyes

I remember and can not, nor will I ever forget. I just hope that when it is my time, that Jesus will Remember Me.  And I hope that one of the first people that I get to see when getting to Heaven, is my mother in law, so I can tell her all about her grandsons.