Nine Months

It’s hard to believe nine months has gone since Tony passed away.  Some days if feels like nine minutes, other times it feels like a life time.  Every month I am reminded by the hospice center I picked out.  I know they mean well, but some of the stuff I read doesn’t make sense to me.

Case in point – yesterday I got a list of things to do to handle grief:

1. Attempt thinking pleasant thoughts for one minute.  This may take practice but it is a helpful habit to cultivate.
2. Become involved with people.
3. Pamper and be gentle with yourself.
4. Replenish self-esteem.  Try harder to like yourself.
5. Try to look at life more positively and not expect that bad things will happen.

While I am sure everyone handles grief differently, I just read those sentences and think, huh?  Another thing it said was “avoid making any big changes or making major decisions.”  Ha!  Well, this revision to my living room was a necessity.  My contractor told me that if we had a heavy snow winter, he wasn’t sure that my wall would have held up to the heavy snow. 

The drywall has all be finished and is primed and ready to paint.  I am showing some swatches of color to my friend who is helping me decorate.  But my thought is this lazy gray on all the walls, and the dark blue on two accent walls – one in the living room the t.v. is on and one wall in the dining room. 

The siding arrived so that’s getting installed today, then the beams will be wrapped in cedar either the end of this week or beginning of next.  While I feel like this process is slow, I don’t really care because it is being done correctly!  So I guess my renovation could be considered a big change!

All I know is that I miss this face.  His touch.  Him making me laugh.  All the little stuff.  And I do not want any of you to think we had the perfect marriage.  Far from it.  We had very different opinions on how we raised our kids.  Tony was the “weekend” Dad.  He got to do all the fun stuff. Joe’s Mom had to do all the school stuff – I know Tony never went to one parent teacher conference.  Although Tony was Joe’s #1 fan when it came to football.  For four years we never missed a game on a Friday night. I’ll never forget that Joe came to our house when he was 16 and drove himself over for the weekend.  He walked in the back door, said hello and said “I met some girl on My Space so I am going to meet up with her.”  Tony’s response?  Have fun!

Hannah gets invited to a sleep over at 16.  Tony wants me to call the parents to make sure they are there, wants a cell number for both the girl where she’s sleeping over at, as well as the parents cell numbers.  When I ask him why he didn’t ask Joe the same questions his only response “he’s a boy.”  Gah.   It’s still hard for me to wrap my brain around that this picture was taken a year and two days ago.  He seemed so happy and he was gaining weight.  I would have never believed in a million years that a mere three months later he’d be gone.

We had a good run!   I now smile more when I see his picture than cry.  And I know as the months and years go by more laughter will be present at the thought of him and our time together rather than tears.

So it’s more than appropriate that I go and visit Tony’s parents in Florida.  I had thoughts of going there for Thanksgiving by the airfare was insane.  So I looked into Labor Day weekend and turns out I can fly out of Rockford to Ft. Meyers and the fare was really good.  So I am taking another blog break – I’ll be back Tuesday the day after Labor Day.  Looking forward to seeing them!

You can follow me on Instagram (my bizzy kitchen) and Randi, I hope you don’t go through too much MBK withdrawal this weekend.

Hope you have a wonderful long weekend!  Hugs!