thankful

i have found myself doing quite a bit of reflecting and praying the last week and a half. my head has been filled with all sorts of different thoughts...good thoughts, scary thoughts, thankful thoughts...basically my mind has been just a major jumble recently. the fact of the matter is last wednesday i got the call that no wife ever wants to receive. the "your husband was in an accident" call. i can honestly say it was one of the scariest moments of my life. 

let me first say that dan is just fine. thankfully. however, receiving a call that your husband has been in a car accident and was being taken to the emergency room is beyond scary. the only info i received was that he lost consciousness at the site and was being taken to the hospital. i knew nothing else. nothing. when i arrived at the er...with 2 of the 3 girls in tow...i was told he was back getting a ct scan but that they knew nothing else. the most important person in my life could be seriously hurt and i know nothing. it just seemed unbelievable. i knew it wasn't that poor nurses fault but i wanted to scream! once i was able to go back to see him i was relieved to find him awake...although a little disoriented...he was up and talking. all his head scans came back clear and even his shoulder was intact despite being t-boned on the driver side. he was diagnosed with a pretty nasty concussion and sent home to rest. it was a best-case-scenario all the way around! his head still doesn't feel 100% because of the concussion...still feels a little foggy...but other than that he is doing really well. 

this whole ordeal got me thinking, even more than usual, about just how blessed we are. how incredibly lucky dan is that this accident was not more serious because it very easily could have been. last week dan the girls and i made a trip out to sacred heart cemetery to lay some flowers and say a big thank you to dan's guardian angel...his dad.




 

for those of you who may not be close to us or who don't know, dan has two dads. he has john, the man we all know and love. the man that dan calls dad and that our girls call grandpa. the man who adopted dan and raised him as his own when he was just a wee little lad. but dan, being the lucky guy that he is, also has dan. the man who gave him life. the man who is up in heaven looking down on him every minute of every day. 

dan lost his dad to a type of non-hodgkin's lymphoma when he was only 3 months old. even though he never got the chance to know his dad, dan has held him very, very close to his heart from day one. he has always been apart of his life. whether it's in pictures, stories or through his o'rourke aunts and uncles...the memory of his dad is always present. i felt that presence more than ever last wednesday when i brought my dan home with only a concussion on what could have been a very scary incident. it only felt right to pay our respects to dan's angel above. it was the least we could do. 

i would have loved to know dan o'rourke. i would love to spend one night to get to know him. from all the stories i have heard from elaine or his siblings there is no doubt in my mind that he was the life of the party...just like his son! i would love for him to meet his granddaughters and see how happy they make his son. to give him a hug and thank him for bringing dan into this world. for bringing the two of us together...because we always say he must have had a hand in that...and most importantly for always keeping a loving hand on dan's shoulder as he travels through life.  although, of course we would all love to have him here, in the flesh, the fact that he is up there protecting dan is the next best thing. not everyone has their own personal guardian angel. i am so happy that i can be apart of that.

so thank you mr. o'rourke...for keeping my husband safe now and forever.