Living is a whole new adventure when you suddenly find yourself alone, widowed and the mother of four young boys a lot like their Dad.
Watching Dad’s Videos
It’s amazing how watching videos of our lives changes so much after loss. My children ask to watch their Dad’s videos often. How I feel watching them now is so different from when I was watching them while he was alive.
Finding Grant
It was just after 11:30 now. I’d called the police, I’d given them the description and GPS location. Now I was just waiting. I sat in my bed pondering, “What is this?” It felt big. That’s why and when I finally texted Grant’s family. Even though I did that, it was to include them in our experience, the reality wasn’t there in me. It hadn’t hit me yet. I just knew there was some story, some explanation that would make it all make sense like everything that had happened to us in the past. Somehow, something, someone would make it all better and okay.
The Last Cup
We have a daily routine. I’ve maintained it for years. We drink a glass of celery juice to start the day, most mornings anyway. I’m not perfect ok? Then we have smoothies. I put them in glass jars because I like the way they taste in glass. It’s fresher and feels more authentic to the flavor of what’s in there. Glass also seems to preserve the juice longer.
He Was Riding With Us
We promised them we’d take them to Disneyland. Grant, you’d never been so I wanted to take you too. We could go to Disneyland as a family we schemed, if we could read the scriptures together as a family and finish the whole book of Mormon. At our pace it’d take us about a year. We were close in February last year when my parents went. I wanted to go then. You said, “We haven’t finished yet.”
The 2nd Year Is Harder
Grant,
In 2 days it will be your birthday. You’d be 40, but you’re dead, so you won’t be. You stopped aging at 38. You managed to immortalize yourself in your youthfulness, before your age really started to show, before you were affected by all the life lessons and joys of growing older. Congratulations.
Brother Heroes
This picture makes me happy. I found it in my little boy’s closet. I don’t know where it came from. School is my guess. What this picture means to me is greater than words. These boys are smiling and goofing together. It shows togetherness. Two brothers who want to be together, play together, take pictures with funny faces together.
Grant Lived for Tomorrow
Grant grew up really poor. His clothes all came from a second hand store. For breakfast when he was young, his family had oatmeal with powdered milk diluted by half to stretch it to last longer.
I Sold Grant’s Happy Place
I sold the house Grant bought 7 months before he died. The one he had to have so he could go flying. The house that got him out of the snow. The house he moved into with the hellish heat. The heat that I felt at his outside celebration of life funeral in July in that heat. The funeral he missed because he was dead.
Becoming a Mom
I wanted the first baby. I admit that freely. The second, well, he was a sound business decision. The third? He was a total surprise. The fourth? Grant wanted that one.
