It’s been a long time since I posted. Many things have happened since Audrey past and everyday feels like we are trying to climb a mountain just to get through.
At Audrey’s service so many people showed up to honor our little princess and it was an amazing celebration of life. Audrey was there with us you could feel the energy. So many people worked so hard at creating the perfect day and they did. Following the ceremony we were able to connect with some friends and family and just hangout. A neighbor gave us some fireworks to shoot off as Audrey loved it so much when we used to do that. But he didn’t just give us the run of the mill fireworks they were awesome. Just as we finished up with sending up Audrey a sky lantern the police showed up. Turns out we had gotten 9 or 10 911 calls from our display. Audrey would have been proud. Everything worked out fine when we explained what was going on.
I have also posted my words from the service. http://wp.me/p6Bzqh-76
Our good friend the guy inside Clark the Cub came to the services and we told him about attending the NLDS game. He asked if we would be interested in attending the NLDS game at Wrigley between the Cubs and Dodgers. Of course the answer was yes and that Wednesday we headed to Chicago. It was hard to go but a good distraction from the hurt of seeing all Audrey’s stuff around the house and not seeing her so we went. It was a total blow out win for the Dodgers which was a bummer but so great to be in Wrigley and getting loved on by Clark the Cub, Jaye Maddon and Tom Ricketts one of the coolest baseball owners in history. Tom found out Cole was at the game and gave him a signed 2016 World Series baseball. It meant the world to Cole and to us. We spent Saturday in the Museum of Science and Industry. Cole was in heaven. He loves museums and just soaked in all the amazing things it had to offer including a tour of a U-505 U boat that was captured during World War II and is now on display. That evening we got to know the guy inside Clark a little better during dinner and watching the Astros win the ALCS to move on to the World Series.
After already being at the final game of the NLDS and the final game of the NLCS and knowing friends that work for the Astro’s we thought let’s try to go. Not expecting anything we started reaching out and were pleased to get an offer to attend game 5 of the 2017 World Series. If not the best game in World Series history it has to be one of the top games ever. 5 hours and 13 minutes long. Most home runs hit and most pitches thrown in a World Series game. The game was on Sunday and it went well into the night. I think the game ended after 1AM and Monday was Cole’s Birthday so he technically turned 10 at the World Series. While in Houston we were able to see a few local friends. It was a quick trip so didn’t get everyone in that we would have liked to. Stayed with an amazing family and cemented some lifelong friendships.
After coming home and watching the Astro’s take the series in game 7 we were left with the void of no baseball. This had been our distraction but was no longer there. I have to say it was notably harder to get through the days without baseball to look forward to. We all started finding different things to fill our time. Cole’s new love for baseball has been fun to watch. We got him some good equipment and he has been playing baseball in the front yard almost every day. Practicing hitting, fielding and playing catch. He wants to sign up for baseball in the spring and since he has never played we are working on the basics to give him at least a chance in the spring. I have started playing video games again to keep my mind busy when it’s to cold(relative in Arizona) or dark to work on projects around the yard. Melissa has been doing her gardening and it looks amazing.
Holidays suck for us right now and I hope they will get better as the years go by but right now doubting that. Thanksgiving was spent with friends that know we were just trying to get through. For Christmas we decided that it’s time to get my overdue dental work started. I have known for 2 years I needed a full mouth restoration done and my braces where step one of that process. When we got back from L.A. I started getting quotes from Doctors for the full mouth restoration. Turned out way more than I had expected. After thinking through it and knowing there was no way I could pay what they wanted I started looking outside of the US. I was able to locate a very good dentist in Cancun Mexico that specializes in what I need and was 1/3 the cost of the US dentist. Now I just needed a week or so in Mexico but because of all the time off for Audrey I knew I needed to work so the only time was the Christmas. So tomorrow we head to Cancun for our Christmas\Dental vacation. We are excited to go but we are missing Audrey being with us on all our new adventures.
As I try to process the dark place that my brain goes on many occasions it leads me to a lot of introspective thinking that forces me to deal with my fragile mental state in life right now. Through this thinking I have been distilling a number of life directing thoughts. A couple things have stood out. The phrase “life is for the living” is an important one. During Audrey’s fight we focused as hard as we could to live everyday as we didn’t know how few there were left with her. We played hard. We laughed hard and we loved deep. Since her passing the void she has left in all 3 is deafening. It’s hard to play and be happy. It’s hard to laugh and not feel guilty and it’s hard to love when your heart is so shattered. We are at a pivotal place in life right now and we are forced to choose which direction the rest of our time on earth will go. We can choose as some do to let this void invest our lives and slowly rot us from the inside or we can choose to start finding ways to climb back from this rocky bottom and play hard until it feels right again. Find ways to laugh until our sides hurt until it feels right again and slowly collect the shattered pieces of our hearts and put them back together one piece at a time. Not saying it’s this simple but these are the core pieces of the simple plan. Every one of us has voids in our life’s caused by things in and out of our control. We can either choose to let them eat us up or we can choose to push past them. Life is too short to not live hard, laugh often and love deep.