I've got you under my skin

This blog post is way overdue.

It's been a long week. I've wanted to write since Tuesday but one thing after another seemed to get in the way.

Such is life. Here I am.

We are not sure why, but both Roger and I have had our emotions amped up over the last week or two. I feel like our grief has entered a new phase. I don't know the "official" name for this part of grief. Maybe some psychologist could give it a title.

There are the little things that cause the leaks. The reminders of her presence. The reminders of her absence. I think that may be part of it but it's not the whole story.

Fifteen months into losing Charlotte and our lives are different in so many ways. I have a new job. We busy ourselves with our work. We make some time to relax. The house can seem so quiet sometimes. Painfully quiet.

We have also busied ourselves with endeavors that bring those memories closer to the surface. Roger has been hard at work on an original piece of music that is just amazing. Inspired by our recent experience, he has written and recorded a song that we hope to offer on our website soon (just working out technical details). Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, I've been writing and revising. As some of you know, I took some time last year to formally write about our experience in the hopes that it might, some day, become a book. I've received some great feedback on a first draft from a few accomplished writers and I spent some time last week revising and editing. The manuscript is still not 100% complete but the next step is shopping to some publishers. Anyone with leads or connections on this, please let me know. I'm not looking to become the next New York Times Bestseller. I just want to find a way to share our story with a greater audience.

Long story short, these activities help us (for good or bad) relive those memories of 2009. Thoughts of Charlotte are distant...and yet still vivid. The journey continues.

The Edge of Seventeen

It's that time of year when the blog musings center on my grief journey. Every year, it seems like we are busy with end-of-the-year school activities and the start of summer, planning vacations, and then (kablam)...it's almost July 9. Grief is funny. Grief is weird. I remember very early after Charlotte died, I watched the movie Rabbit Hole. There's an amazingly poignant scene where Nicole Kidman's character is talking with another woman who lost a child over 10 years before (played by Dianne Wiest). She talks about grief being like a brick in your pocket. It never goes away. Sometimes you can even forget it's there. But it comes back and makes its presence known from time to time. And (she says) "it's what you have of them." I probably did not fully realize then what a powerful and true analogy that is. As time goes on, our grief changes. Yet, it is always there on the edge of things. It sits in that pocket and sometimes makes itself known. This

Bittersweet Sixteen

I think about Charlotte every single day. However, this time of year, I'm flooded with all kinds of memories as we commemorate the anniversary of her birth. This year feels like a bit of a milestone. Sixteen. If cancer had not taken her life back in 2010, I have a feeling I would be planning a massive birthday celebration this year. 16 always feels like a landmark year in someone's life. I have been thinking a great deal about the last birthday party we had for Charlotte in 2009. We didn't know it at the time, but we were halfway through her treatment journey. We had been through three major brain surgeries and a few rounds of inpatient chemotherapy. Treatments were not going well. In fact, right after her birthday, we would make the trip to Houston, Texas where we would settle in for about 10 weeks of proton beam radiation treatments and a new customized chemotherapy protocol. This was the unspoken "last chance option" to beat that aggressive brain tumor into

Tis the Season for Leaks

Now that we've had a few posts to settle in with one another, let's get personal, shall we? It's almost an understatement to say that this has been a difficult year. The last few weeks, especially, brought back a flood of memories. This time last year, we were in the home stretch . We were watching our daughter die. I have spent the weeks since Thanksgiving thinking of our final days with her. I miss her terribly. I miss her laugh and her smile and her stories. I cry a lot. This is going to sound funny but I don't cry the way I used too. In the past, if I got upset, you would KNOW that I was upset. Now, it just kind of leaks out. I'll be sitting somewhere: waiting in line at the store, working, driving in my car....and the tears just start to flow. I don't even necessarily "break down" and sob. I just leak. Anything can trigger the leak. Usually it's a memory of Charlotte. Sometimes I'm reminded of a child or a family i

I See What You Meme

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