It's funny how things happen... you'd have to assume it's some carefully planned and orchestrated way that someone happens to fall right into your life at the moment you feel your most wounded...my ups and downs are still present although the height and depth of each has lessened some...I have some really sad days when my heart feels extra heavy...and through all of this I have learned something deep and true about family...blood means so little...I have redefined family...I suppose, theoretically family is defined as: A fundamental social group in society typically consisting of one or two parents and their children...and the media and our "learned values" make us sway to envision the stereotypical families we grew up either reading about or watched on t.v. when in actuality, it was usually a pale comparison to family life...for real. When someone doesn't have strong family ties and something like this happens, like what Ted and I experienced...you need a back up plan...if you don't have strong bonds of friendships...you're chance of surviving this dissipates...thankfully, I married young, to the love of my life...who stays in love that long anymore? I could easily fall down upon my knees to profess to the planet how wonderful the man I married is...and ALWAYS was...I look at him and think...I love him and he's mine...his family loved me from the beginning...a "welcoming" felt from the first moment I met then...and they walked beside us...all of our years together...a good family does that...not only in happy times or in times of wealth and good health, but also in times of weakness....feeling lost or in question. My mother-in-law held my hand through the years and Ted's dad held my heart...I feel like "Big Ted" still fills my heart...when I visit Adam, I silently talk with him, too. He was proud of us...of me...of the mere fact that I married his son...what an incredible thing for me to always cherish. He's gone a long time now...and it seems like we miss him more than ever...so thankful are we of the lessons learned from him in the short time we had been lucky enough to have him, but the values he instilled in us have helped us to evolve into the people we have become today...there's no blood line there for me but somewhere, somehow, the lines of love run much deeper than any realm of blood...I am thankful...so thankful that I have them...I am so grateful for the angel who stopped me in the alley last night to make me appreciate things I didn't know anyone else would think of...I thank God for angels who check on me all of the time...and hope that I can be an angel back again and again...to help others in their time...and summing up my new definition of family...it's a group of people whose hearts are filled with love and meaning..and purpose, who hold each other up in times of sadness and rally around each other in times of happiness...unending love and support by people who'd go to the end of the world for you...yes, I like that...