Some of my hardest days, are also my very best. The girls have craft paper, glitter, stickers and pictures over the ENTIRE floor, and their fighting for the day has finally subsided. I hear them so excited to show each other what pictures that they have found and how they are decorating their pages for each other. I think this is the first 15 minutes all day, that they haven’t been arguing about the stupidest things. They both make sure that they have pages of each other in their books and want to know every detail about the photos of you and I from our vacation. They can’t wait until we get to go as a family to some of the places that you and I went to on our cruise last year.
We had plans today to take the girls to a corn maze with Zach, our 22 your old, and your Best Friend/adopted man-child and his GF, whom you always referred to as “Ungrateful” and now the girls have decided his GF is “Grateful.” The corn maze was rained out from yesterdays storms, so we decided on bowling. It sounded like a good idea at the time, until we were actually there and all the memories of us bowling there on your birthday just 8 weeks earlier. How hard it is to be having such a seemingly normal “family” outing and for you not to be there. It’s so difficult for me to be sitting there, watching a couple that you introduced, have such sweet innocent interactions, and I realize that there will never be moments for us like that again. Hahaha Ungrateful was bowling well and his lady not so hot, so I decided to try and teach her how to distract him. I mean come on! How easy it would be, had it been your turn, for me to walk right up to you, lean innocently against your side, and get you off your game. But all it did was make me sad thinking it could never happen. You would have loved it anyways, they are growing up so fast! I even saw hand holding and arms around the shoulder. Being the Matriarch of our stitched together family, makes me proud, but I miss you. It’s hard to be step-mother to 4, adopted mother to our friends that we’ve brought into our family, and do it on my own.
I’m sitting outside, taking in the cool fall air while the dogs fight on the lawn, and I can hear the girls glitter glueing their hearts out. Some days I am just so overwhelmed by the dichotomy of my life. Such happy moments, contradicted by the sadness. Overwhelmed with the family that surrounds us, to feel even more lonely on the inside. Drowning in such heartache while going through photos of some of the best times of my life.
How in the hell am I going to get through this without you? Halloween is our favorite, and our anniversary and that’s quickly approaching. Who cries that they have to do Halloween alone? Me that’s who. Our anniversary trip had to be cancelled, and then followed by the other holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years and then my birthday. It’s going to suck so bad. I know we always joked about sleeping like a starfish if we ever got to sleep alone, but I’m really tired of it. I long for the your bed-hogging ways, and how you couldn’t sleep unless your hand was on my head. Hahaha you say that was for me, but I always thought it was weird, but didn’t want to stop you if that’s what made you comfortable to sleep. In all reality, Sally our 14 lb toothless chihuahua is the starfish. She sleeps in the middle of the bed, and always gets your blanket just right.
I know I’ll never get over this, and I will always miss you. It just means learning how to accept my reality, and embrace the feelings without letting it break me down. I just hope that along the way I become a better person, and make you proud with how I handle life’s biggest F-U curveball ever. I hope that I can handle it with tact and grace, humor and compassion. This complicated tap dance of being in the kids lives, helping them to be better and making sure that they never forget you or your immense love for them. I don’t want them to ever forget the great times they had with you, and how much you missed them when you couldn’t be together.
The one sentence I find myself repeating over and over through this process, is how I lost everything I had in one moment. But how lucky am I to have had so much to lose? Instead of thinking how different life would be, if we could turn back time and magically know that you needed help so that we could get you medical attention. I need to focus on how much different the last few years of my life would have been had I not said ok to that first date at Starbucks. A date I tried to get out of because I had some dental work done that day and I looked horrible. We laughed and talked, and when the date was over, I kissed you in the parking lot. A moment you would forever tease me about. On the way home I remember calling my Best Friend and she asked how it went, I told her that I finally met someone who talks more than me. Who knew that soulmates could come in Ginger.
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