May 8th snuck up on me this year. Memories flood me all the time and sometimes dates don’t really feel much different but sometimes they do. I noticed that I’ve been a little more emotional this past week than normal but I’m also freshly off prescription anti-depressants and trying to go a more natural route so that could be part of it as well but this morning started as any other until I saw the date and was flooded with emotions and memories. Like a little movie playing in your head.

As the kids were eating breakfast before school I told them that this would have been our 17th anniversary and showed them this little wedding clip. (a bad video taken of a VHS converted to DVD playing on my laptop and copied by my phone lol) Haley said “he didn’t have grey hair” and Hayden said that my teeth were really white and I was super skinny and that I don’t look anything like that anymore. Thanks son. haha They don’t recognize those people in this video. Makes me a little sad that their memories are fading but I know that that’s normal as young as they were and how much our lives have changed now.

As I’ve seen in a Ted Talk that’s been going around on grief, my grief will never end. I will never get over it and move on from it but instead I’m moving forward with him beside me. Not in a physical sense but in a spiritual, soulful sense. My experiences, my journey, my grief have molded me into who I am now and who Mark fell in love with. He fell in love with the me who emerged from the ashes of her tragedy and we are moving forward together in that grief. It’s not always easy but it’s our journey. Beautiful things can and have emerged so I feel blessed in many ways.

Today I will remember Brian and the happy times. May 8th 2002 was a beautiful, happy day. He was and is a beautiful soul and I have peace knowing that he is not really gone but just on the other side and that I will see him again.

xoxo

D