Life is Good. Love Makes It Better.

Go Shorty, It’s Your Birthday…

Except…well…not quite.

You would have been 46 years old today.  If you hadn’t died at the age of 43.

It’s so weird for me to think – you’ve never seen this number…you’ll never see any number after. 

It’s just not fair.

You should have seen this birthday.  You should have seen this one and all the other ones, hence.

We should have grown old together.

I should have seen you aging into these, your middle yours, then, your old age…continuing to gray, become wrinkled, watch that bald spot grow…cracking inappropriate jokes, turning everything into sexual innuendo…what have you…just to spark a smile.

I should see you outside mowing the lawn, checking my tires, weed eating, playing the guitar, and playing with our daughter.

But instead – I see me.  Weed eating.  Checking the mail.  Vacuuming the car.  Playing with our daughter.  Making decisions.  Figuring things out…

• And there’s still SO MUCH to figure out…

I dream about you from time to time. 

Sometimes, they’re scary dreams.  Caregiving dreams where everything goes wrong and I make terribly horrific mistakes and I wake up, heart pounding, feeling short of breath.

Other times, I dream of you after you’ve gotten sick, in various stages…navigating the overwhelming stages of everything that is ALS.  Those are hard dreams.  They’re frustrating…for both of us.  I wake up remembering the struggles we encountered and how we both had to learn to be more forgiving.

But sometimes…I dream of a world without ALS. 

In THOSE dreams?  You are NOT sick.  Not at all.  It isn’t a blip on our horizon…not a treacherous chasm of unknowns to be navigated.  It’s just us.  Us, in all our un-extraordinariness.  Just living life.

In THOSE dreams, we talk.  We sit.  We hold hands.  We kiss.  We do, well, we do other things, as well.

I miss ALL those times.  I do. 

And I’m grateful for those reminders.

They remind me that life is good.  Love makes it better.  And hope is a good thing.  (#Shawshank)

Our memories still make me smile. 

I smile more now, than cry.  Also, a good thing.

You would be SO proud of our daughter.  She’s fierce.  Of that, I have no doubt.  I’m glad she’s growing up to have confidence in herself and feel assured of her place in the world.  I can visualize your face at this exact moment…every nuance of every crinkle and every sparkle revealing the pride you have for her.  She loves you so.

She is SO proud to be your daughter.

She starts high school next week…Right, I know??!  Can you believe that?  I’m still trying to wrap my brain around that fact.  Our sassy little munchkin and bossy bit of goods has grown into a mouthy teenager with an impressive command of sarcasm.  (I don’t know where she gets that…)

And she’s beautiful.  SO beautiful.  But she doesn’t know it, yet.  And that makes her all the more beautiful.

I’m starting to get nervous about boys, even though that’s not even in the cards just yet.  But when it is?

Oh Lort, what do I do?

“Speak softly and carry a big stick.”  That sounds like a plan.

She’s a good kid.  We were, and have been, blessed immeasurably by her presence in our life.

In the two months that we’ve been here…Maine has been good to us. 

I wish, with every fiber of my being, that you could be here with us.  “Silvertown” is definitely a thing.  For me, it lies here in Maine.  Whether that proves to be a permanent state of being remains to be seen.  But for now, it’s the closest to Silvertown that I’ve ever seen or experienced.

It’s strange to experience that without you by my side.

Life’s not fair.  And I’m so sorry for that.

I’m sorry you’re not able to see your daughter grow up.

I’m sorry you’re not able to share these incredible moments with me.

And I’m sorry that you didn’t get the best of me.  I learned SO much from our journey.  I’m a better person for it.  I know that.  And, I’m grateful for that, but I’m also so sorry I wasn’t more…or better…or best…for you.  That seems so unfair.  Because you loved me through the worst of me.  And you never once held that against me. 

I was lucky.  I know that.   And I’m trying very hard NOT to be greedy.  We had twenty-two good years together.  They were not perfect, and we weren’t always blissfully happy, but taken as a whole?  We did pretty good, Babe. 

We were like a favorite pair of comfortable old shoes that took forever to “break in.”  After all that time, although well worn, they still fit, and still felt too good to merit tossing aside, even though they might be coming apart at the seams.

Today ‘should’ mark the start of my season of “sadness,” as the next few months bookmark the occurrence of so many momentous events…placeholders of remembrance in the scheme of my space time continuum.  But – as is my way, I refuse to let it.  

Fall has always been my favorite time of year.  And, although I can’t stop the stabs of pain that find their way in, I won’t allow them to cast a pall over an entire season of life.  There is still good out there, and joy, and happiness.  And finding a way to live in the light of those qualities honor your memory more than my own selfish pain.

On this day, as on every day, you will be forever missed, forever remembered…and forever loved.

It’s just not possible for it to be otherwise.

“Speak softly and carry a big stick;”

Theodore Roosevelt

#missmysuperman