This... Sucks

Yesterday, I was doing okay until I staggered into a whole field of "grief landmines".  More like I'd been dropped into the middle of the field with a ill-made map.

It all started with the rocking chair in Elliot's room.  Made of solid wood by gnomes in upstate Vermont (or handcrafted in a factory... I forget which), it's a beautiful piece of furniture, one which Aimee and I agonized over for hours and several stops at furniture stores before Owen was born. We talked about sitting in it on the porch when we were old and grey... and eventually passing it on to our kids.

That's the part that stuck in my chest: "old and grey." Aimee and I had a lot of plans for being old and grey together--she made me promise to stroke her hair when she was an old lady.

I've been robbed of the chance to fulfill my promise.

And that sucks. Hard.

Friends and family keep asking me how I'm doing. Okay. Awful. Okay again. It comes and goes.

I'm scared.

Confused.

Lonely in a crowd.

And scared some more.

But I'm not ashamed of sharing. Aimee never was--I valued her honesty as much as any other piece of her, and I'm not about to dishonor her memory by clamming up.

Write hard?

Yes. And live hard, too.