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| I heart cheeseburgers! |
1/29/11 – Hello everyone. Today has been a bitter sweet day for me. I am feeling good for the most part. A little tired. Today was the visitation for my neighbor/fellow cancer fighter/close friend. It hasn’t been an easy day.
How do you wake up knowing that you have to go and say good-bye to one of your good friends? How does one prepare for that? I honestly don’t know.
This morning Todd and I were waking up and cleaning the house a little. I look over at Todd and he is crying. I look at the TV and it’s on ESPN. What’s going on?! I ask Todd and he said that it just switched over to ESPN from something we had recorded and when the TV flipped the first thing he saw and heard was “Rock, Chalk, Jayhawk, KU” chanted by a ton of Kansas fans at College Game Day. Our friend was a huge Kansas basketball fan. It’s just kind of weird finding your husband crying to College Game Day – I mean, it’s normal during Auburn football, but this is basketball season.
Todd and I met our close friend group outside the funeral home and we all walked in together. I have learned through all of this the sheer importance of friends. It is so easy to take people for granted. We all hung out a lot. It is easy to get used to seeing people and not even consider how much their friendship truly means. My friends are truly awesome. I love that we hug more now. We say we love each other and know that we really mean it. There isn’t anything shallow when it comes down to it. I know that these people are there for me come what may and I have never been more overwhelmed with love. We all walked into the funeral home together. It just seemed so unreal. Looking at him, it still didn’t seem real because it didn’t look like the real “him”. The video with pictures just about did me in. What is it about seeing someone you love the way you remember them, listening to powerful music, and knowing that you’ll never get those moments again. All you have are the memories. The memories are just so special but they seem like not enough. Not nearly enough.
I want to be a 2 year old and stomp my feet and shout, “God! Why? Why? I just don’t understand.” I want to pitch a fit until I get my way. I am forgetting something very important – pitching a fit never got me anywhere growing up (Janice Harden wouldn’t stand for that). Why would I believe that it would get me anywhere now? It’s hard to remember that my friend is in a place with no more pain, no more cancer, and is fully healed – hard to remember, but oh so true. Maybe I feel like I need to DO something. Crying has never been my strong suit. I’m too much like my Granny. It’s not that we don’t feel it’s just that we show our emotions differently. I would much prefer to cry and get it out than to just sit and think about it but that’s what I do.
I met a lot of new people today. My situation and my friend’s have shown me just how good people can be. People who you don’t even know care, they truly care. How cool is that? I never would have thought that people would connect the way they do, but I guess when it comes down to it we are all very similar. It was nice to hug so many people and be able to talk about my friend and laugh. It was mentioned that I probably shouldn’t be around so many people because of the chemo – oh, my gosh! I completely didn’t even think about that. I’m stayed at home for the 2nd part of the visitation. I was glad I was able to show up for the first part.
On our way home from the funeral home I wanted a cheeseburger (imagine that). Yeah! I decided to branch out and tried Krystal. Todd and I got a sack of Krystal’s! There were so many of them. I did my part but I couldn’t put as big a dent in them as I would have preferred. I would love a smoothie but I still can’t have the cool stuff yet. One of my friends from home mentioned the whole “footprints” thing. How God will carry you or walk beside you when you need some strength. That definitely applies to me now on various levels. It made me think of one of my favorite Leona Lewis song’s “Footprints in the Sand”. It’s a great song. I've listened to it 5 times straight now. It always helps to know that someone will carry you, when you need a friend. Sometimes that's all we need - a friend to be with us through it all.
Tomorrow is the funeral so it will probably be another heavy blog. Thanks for sticking with me even through the tough stuff. Night y’all!
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