Each day goes by and I feel myself wanting to mark the date- four days without Pat, one week without Pat, two weeks...but this is not a deployment that will come to a physical end. It is hard but we are managing and continuing to live life each day. The tears and sad moments come and go and that is perfectly okay.
The kids are doing things with friends, teenagers are looking for jobs, the house still needs to be cleaned, laundry washed and the mounds of paperwork that comes flooding in when you are suddenly a single mom and a widow at age 40...sigh..it just doesn't seem right or fair but we squeeze all these lemons, add some water and as much sugar as it takes to get our lemonade.
Pat may be gone but the rest of us have to keep living. We are sticking with our 50 prescribed hugs per day and remembering Pat as our funny and fun loving guy. When he first lost his eye to cancer, he would often shine a flashlight in his mouth so that the beam would shoot out of his empty eye space and chase the kids around creeping them out. That was who he was and I know that is how he would want us to carry on, turning something tragic and sad into something we could see as humorous and fun. He is being buried with his favorite 'Cancer Sucks' t-shirt on under his Army uniform, he would love that.
Last week we rented out our local zoo and for three hours we had a wonderful night full of love and friendship in Pat's honor. No matter where we lived or visited, our family has always gone to the zoo. It was the first place Pat took the kids when he came home from his first tour in Iraq. The Memphis Zoo was the last place we visited as a family together over Spring Break. We were members of our local zoo and went as often as we could. It was a fitting and 'cool' way to honor him and I am so glad we were able to do that. We have quite a long wait until we have any formal type services and it was a nice way to have some sort of closure in the meantime, especially for the kids. Burial will be in September at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington DC with a reception for family and friends following. Contact me if you would like more details.
Today we were floating around the pool and Wil looked up at the puffy white clouds drifting by and with the innocence of an almost 3 year old announced that he could see Daddy up there. He then yelled as loud as he could "Hi Daddy!" and waved. When I asked what Daddy was doing he told me that he was waving back (duh!) and that he was flying around. I wondered out loud if Daddy was with angels, to which Wil replied (again duh!) "Yes, he's with angels but he doesn't got wings Mama, he's just flapping his arms." Despite everything that we have been through, it is moments like that when I just feel so very very blessed!
Thanks and love
Tammy
Today's Glass Half-Full: "The happiest people don't worry too much about whether life is fair or not, they just get on with it". ~Andrew Matthews
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