Moving On

The time has come to move on. I've been avoiding my blog knowing that my small tribute to my dad would pop up when I opened it. I have purposefully opened it a time or two and it has been greeted with various emotions.

Every now and then I realize that he's no longer here and that makes me sad ... and then I realize he's in Heaven ... with Jesus and all those who have been called home before now and that makes me happy. But still - I'm sometimes sad.

As prepared as I thought I was, I still have experienced pain and hurt. Part of that is probably because of the roll that a daughter partially plays in the whole event - at least in our family we (the daughters) had to be the strong and logical ones and that doesn't always allow for much grieving. Until after ... when everyone is gone, the commotion has died down, and you and one is left to live life ... but you still have grieving to do.

This happened to me. I kept thinking, if I can just make it to Tuesday night (the evening of the funeral) I can have a few minutes to myself or maybe even a couple of hours. But, that didn't happen as Tim's company announced it was selling itself at 430 that afternoon.

So I thought ... if I can just make it to Thursday evening, I'll go out by myself for a couple hours, so I "bucked up" and took on the role of consoling wife. Adopting my father's "we'll cross that bridge when we get there" philosophy and once again became the reassuring one of the family.

Thursday night came along and I truthfully don't remember what happened, but again... I sucked it up and put myself on the back burner. The problem is, you can only put yourself on the back burner just so many times.

Honestly, I was pushing it and by Friday morning, I blew. I thought my head would explode and I thank God for good friends like my friend Leslie who didn't say, "call me if you need me" as those who know me, know I would never call. Instead, she said, "I'm sending someone over to watch the kids." And she did. And I swallowed my pride and admitted I needed help.

Within two hours someone was here to watch my kids while I took myself over to Panera and was able to sit, pray, and read ... and think through the events of the last week. That's all I needed - a couple hours, uninterrupted to sit and think and pray.

It's not rocket science - it can't get much easier than that. So, why is it so hard to make sure it happens on our own? I'm extremely thankful to everyone who looked out for me, helped out and was simply just there during this time.

THANK YOU!

That is all for now... and I leave you with a picture of the week:

Tim participated in the Monroe Boat Club Single Hand Race this past Saturday

That's Tim sailing Captiva

This is the hazy start to the race -

I think that is Captiva on the far left...see the blue at the bottom of the front sail?