It’s been a while since the last post. This is not to say that things have been dull.
I am 99% finished with the house in Avondale (the one that I posted BEFORE photos of) and have a very interested party who may even be submitting an offer today. Stay tuned. AFTER photos shall appear next week. The place is gorgeous. The best one yet. And I say that with profound gratitude to all Mike did to help me in this business both before and after his death. I really feel like he was looking out for me in all of this, as crazy as that may sound.
I’ve been doing a bit of yardwork here and there. We’re going to set up a garden fort on Monday, which would have been Mike’s 41 birthday. There is a large part of me that is still either in denial (I cannot believe that Mike is really gone forever) and wants to fight this reality (NO! and maybe if I say it again, it will all turn out to be a horrible nightmare).
Some side of me is a bit more accepting, feels slightly less freakish when going out as a three person family, instead of the intact four person nuclear family that we used to be.
I think I had a two week stretch of feeling normal, buoyant, even.
The past week has been more melancholic.
I found a drawing that Marley made on the drive home from our wonderful August vacation in MN. It was a picture of her and Avery and Mike in a canoe. They had spent a fair amount of time on the St. Croix river together canoeing. I lost it. They were such happy times, snatched away way too soon. And then I cried for my kids. What did they do to deserve this life? During this crying spell and old Green Day song came on the radio, which gave me a flashback to our first days together as a couple in MN. Green Day performed that very song in the gallery that Mike owned and we attended that show. It was just before the band hit it big. There were maybe 100 or so people at the show. It was not a happy afternoon, remembering, wondering.
So, yes, I keep plugging away. No, I can’t envision a very different future for us than what we’re doing right now. In a way I’d like to invent a whole different life. But I don’t know what it would be.