I'm here!

I haven't disappeared from the planet. Blogging seems to be something I can't make time for lately!

We had the one year anniversary of Marissa's death last June 11. We turned off the phone and nobody got their calls returned. We did get a few messages from people letting us know they love us and were thinking of us and that really truly means the world to me, so THANK YOU to our friends who did that for us.

On June 11, we each wrote a letter to Marissa. Then we "sent" them to her by burning them with the fire from a candle lit in her honor. At the same time she died, we planned to be at the park that sits below the hospital window dh and I were looking out as we held her and let her go. That was an adventure! The park is halfway down what is termed "medical hill" (ick~ but that's another story). The parking situation anywhere within the vicinity of downtown is truly sad, so we parked way at the top of the hill and had to walk most of the way down to get to the park. On the way, our 5 year old decides he must go to the bathroom right NOW. So he and I race across the street and luckily find a bathroom at the community college on the other side. We race back across the street and the 4 year old must go to the bathroom right NOW. So she and I race across the street. We race back, to discover she has left her incense in the bathroom. So I race back accross and find the incense. OK! We were off to an interesting start!

We made it to the park, which is a term used extremely loosely here. What it really is, is a very small strip of land with a huge drop-off going the rest of the way down medical hill on one side and a busy street on the other. We made it just in time (Marissa's official time of death was 7:41PM) and lit our incense. Then the baby started crying because he wanted to get down and crawl around and my 7 year old started really sobbing uncontrolably. I think this was good, but I was really afraid she would pass out. She was hyperventilating the whole time we were there and all the way back up the hugemongous hill, which seemed a whole lot bigger going in the other direction with 5 little kids; two of them needing to be carried or pushed, and one of them sobbing. Everyone that walked by was checking us out, wondering what we were doing to her.

All the kids stayed up late except the 2 year old, who crashed early. Venus was bright in the sky and was a beautiful sight from our house. The kids and dh wrestled in the front yard and seemed to have a great time. After they went to bed dh and I sat outside until about 1AM, sharing a bottle of wine sent to us by a dear friend.

The day itself was kind of bad. It was long. Very very long.
The day before was worse. I think because it was a Sunday and she died on a Sunday. I was marking time that day. Noticing when the clock said 10:30 because that's when she coded. Remembering the drive to the hospital. Going through each and every event in my head.

June has been hard. I woke up June 1 and knew it was June. I felt as though she had just died a couple weeks ago. It was not a shadow of the previous pain as I had expected it to be. It was the same sharp, unendurable pain. That was a surprise. But today I feel OK. I have hope and joy and can feel the promise of life. I don't know what tomorrow will be like, but I suppose any one of us could say that on all kinds of levels.

So here I go. Moving forward. I have no choice. As long as she gives me some of those wonderful signs once in a while I'll be OK until I see her again.

Oh! I should mention that the sky looked exactly the same that it did one year ago June 11. It was lavender with wispy clouds.