reflection...

Today was a day for reflection and the continuing journey towards healing. A year ago today on March 02, 2005, there was a tragedy on our reserve that had taken three of our youth way too early in their life. We had a Candlelight Vigil in our community tonight. It was the first of its kind here. We had walked from the site of where the killings had taken place up to the church for a prayer service. We had planned this all last minute. Two nights ago, the idea was brought up. By that night, I had went and talked to the family for permission to have this event that would hopefully involve the whole community. With their permission, I had went back to work to meet a couple friends there to start the planning and to do up the poster. The next day (yesterday), we had a meeting with the Chief and Council and we presented this idea to them and they gave us their support, so with that, the posters were photocopied and was distributed all over the community and we were off shopping for the candles and the food.

In the midst of all this, it was snowing, snowing and snowing some more and we had come upon our winter snowstorm of the year! Blah. It snowed like there was no tommorow! This morning, we woke up with a thick blanket of snow on the ground, but luckily, it was not very cold nor windy. With the help and support of a lot of the community members, we were able to pull off this Candlelight Healing Ceremony with a great success. Around 200 people had showed up tonight to show their support. I was just amazed with amount of people that had shown up because it was just yesterday morning that I was handing out the posters and with all the snow that had fallen it had caused some "not recommended to drive" situations, I was not sure on how it would turn out. I have never organized an event like this. I had never been to a candlelight vigil before tonight. I was stressed out and worried. What if no one showed up? What if everyone was snowed in? or What if we didn't have enough candles or food for the people? Everything turned out great though. Without the support of many people, it would not have been a success. Our community, once again, had pulled together to help us in our time of need. Thank You.

With that all said...I am very exhausted.

I miss Greg.