As Sophie and I were enjoying a leisurely walk this morning after I got home from work, my mind started to wander. If you ever read any of my stuff you know this is not a new phenomenon. By any definition.
I thought about the anniversary of Diane’s death tomorrow, which coincides with the birthday of the little Diamond, who is turning two. I wrote about this confluence of events and the emotions it brought out last year so I’m not going to get into that again, exactly. But those thoughts morphed into these; the grandchild formerly known as Beatle Baby starts Kindergarten this week. Meaning, he is now where the Heir To The Throne was when Diane died.
And I circled around in my head where we were eleven years ago today. To the best of my recollection we spent a good portion of the day in her hospital room, talking about the days and weeks to come. I had brought in pictures of the dogs to display in her room, the almost one year old Sophie and Tobi the Jack Russell terrorist (not a typo) and Diane mentioned to me that one of the nurses had told her I could bring Sophie over for a visit, to the outdoor sitting area that was just outside of her hospital room.
As I’ve said in the past (I may have even written about it before, I’m not sure) when you lose someone close to you, you don’t need triggers to think about them. In fact, I think just the opposite is true, especially early on into your grief; you need a trigger of some sort to NOT think about them.
This evolves over time. Of course when you’re living it, that time feels as though it will never arrive.
While I was at work yesterday I was going through my email and I’m not sure how it happened but I found an old “mailbox” that I used to store emails from an old account.
One Diane and I shared.
As I read through some of the last emails she received, mostly from families she served as an AAIM advocate, I flashed back through so many memories. And when I say “flash” I mean it. I pushed them through my brain as quickly as I could because the firehouse is the last place on earth I want to get emotional and I knew if I dwelled on those memories it would be unavoidable. The hardest part for me was looking through some pictures Diane’s brother sent me, in case I needed them for her wake. In so many of the images her beauty leapt out at me and there were so many great pictures. This one in particular gets me every time, as it one of my favorites of the two of us.
It was taken at the reception we held in our backyard after the Quiet Child got married and it was one of our best days after Caitlin was killed.
I think maybe all of this was compounded by the fact that I’ll be on the road tomorrow, headed south to house hunt for a few days. I probably would have swung by the cemetery tomorrow, although that may be my head telling me that because I know since I’m in transit tomorrow it won’t happen. I can’t honestly say I would have gone had I been home all day.
But either way, I know I’ll be thinking of her all day tomorrow.
Even without the triggers.
Peace