I want to try to take more random pictures and just write about happenings as they occur. The girls know that I'm "writing a book," as Graysen said, and she wondered today why I don't have it published. I told her that no one in the world would be interested in reading this except them - and even then, they might find it a little boring.
I also enjoy just going back through the years and finding out what September was in years past. Emily and her family and then all of them with me have tried to go to a special place near here every year around September 12 when Mike left us.
Emily found the tree somehow in a green area beside the Snoqualmie River in North Bend, WA. I'm not sure exactly how she found it, but she went there sometimes after coming home from spending all day in the hospital. She would go with me and bring me home since I was petrified of that drive - a floating bridge and 2 tunnels and a many-laned interestates - three of them actually that criss-crossed. Toward the last two weeks, I was able to come and go myself - although I never liked it much - and she would go to the field and just fall apart. Just starting a new career and having two babies plus a father not expected to live was almost more than she could take. I think I waited a while to fall apart and just routinely went to the ICU floor every day for the whole 28 days and listened and learned and helped when I could, so I was busy - and exhausted when I finally got into bed at night. Also, I think I had had time to digest it and realized that we were getting to the age where this was not such a shock. Maybe acceptance. I don't know, because I still haven't fully accepted it.
Anyway, we grieved side by side by in different ways during that September and on through the year. I want to sort out all the pictures from all the years - some years we didn't get to go and maybe a couple of times Ryan or I missed it. Even though we are sad, talking helps and smiling and laughing and regretting that the girls didn't know him and he didn't know them.
I'll just put a few pictures here that we took on Friday. It was quite a production to plan this and do it. You wouldn't think so, but Emily had a noon meeting in Bellevue and she didn't get home as quickly as she should. She stopped and got some nice snacks for us and set them out with blankets and chairs and Woodrow running around and the girls building their usual nest from the crabapples (I think) that are always on the ground. I'll go into more detail later, but these are a few pictures.
Emily has more pictures, so I'll finish up when I'm not hurried and probably remember other things.
No comments:
Post a Comment