I'm at Dad's tonight. Tomorrow is his 85th birthday, and I didn't want him to be alone when he woke up in the morning. This will be his first birthday w/o Mom, which means we've all gone through our first birthday since she died. I think we're all beginning to pick ourselves up and trying to move forward. I'm discovering that grieving is one step forward and three steps back, and some days it's 10 steps back, which makes the next 10 days a struggle to get back to that one day when I felt good. But I'm also noticing that each time I claw my way back to a good day, it's an even better day. I guess what I'm trying to say is that when the good days come they're better than they were after having gone through the bad days.
It's funny. While we were playing cards tonight, I was talking about the big mess I have at home w/ all our home improvements. Dad doesn't read this blog, but he said the same thing I talked about the other night about what Mom used to always say about making messes. He said, "Ma always used to say, 'You gotta make a mess to make it nice.'" That sure makes it obvious that they spent 62 years together. Sometimes it's almost like talking to Mom when I'm talking to Dad. I wonder sometimes if he feels the same when he talks to me b/c people have always said that I sound like Mom. I was very careful when I walked in the door tonight not to holler, "Helloooo" like she used to. I also noticed at dinner that it almost pained him to look at me, and I thought maybe it's b/c I look a lot like Mom when she was younger. I wonder sometimes if looking at me just makes him miss her that much more, but then I notice that he has at least one picture of her in every room of the house so wherever he goes, he can see her. The pictures reflect her at many different times in her life.
I brought the multi-colored hummingbird solar light since Dad took the flower solar light out to Mom's grave. I know when he passes, I'll put it by the gravestone so the flower and the hummingbird can be reunited. He told her all about it tonight when he talked to her picture in the funeral program. That's his way of working through the grief just like this blog is for me.
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