Grief is Weird

How has it been a year already? Actually it will 1 year at exactly 6:56 pm eastern today. At times the days have gone by very slowly, almost as if time stood still, and there are days that have sped by - and here we are at August 13. Some days I swear I can smell your lotion or hear your footsteps, but it's all in my memories now.  I've learned a lot about myself and others in the past year. Here are a few highlights:  Everyone grieves in their own way, and there is no time table on grief. You think you're doing great and then you're in Aldi seeing the 5-hour energy dupes that you used to buy in bulk and you're sobbing. Have a very detailed will. You don't think that people will give a $hit about that ashtray you made in 3rd grade? Yeah, after you're gone, someone will. Put. Everything. In. The. Will. (Trust me on this one folks). I am a hell of a lot stronger than I thought. Randy asked me to take care of him until the end and beyond, and I did. I went to h...

The closer it gets to August 13, the more I think about the last couple of weeks with Randy. In mid-July we had a lot of visitors and they were all saying good-bye. At one point I told Randy I was tired of people coming to say good-bye and he said to me "Darlin, I'm dying". He knew it. I knew it and just didn't want to admit it. We had a couple of weeks where it was just us. It was peaceful. We figured things out - improvise, adapt and overcome became our daily mantra. We had a lot of conversations in those days, and Randy told me he loved me more in that time than ever before.  I think about Randy's last couple of days a lot. The day before, August 12, Randy's mom, brother and sister arrived. His mom and brother had never been here before. His sister's first visit was only the month before. They stayed a good part of the day, and Randy was able to visit with them.  After they left to go to the cabin where they were staying, I tried to get Randy settled fo...