Tag Archives: memories

Wake me up in three years

29 Sunday Jan 2017

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In my despair and grief stricken, not knowing how I could move forward with so much darkness and unbearable pain, I wished I could just fast forward to three years after David’s death.

Well here I am three years later. Did it go by fast or was it slow? Frankly, I am not sure.  I am still confronted with how did this happen? How have I lived three years without David?  How is it that my younger daughter has now spent more of her life without her Dad? How is it that my older daughter schooling has been void of David attending any of her school events? The reality is that time did not make this better.

Does time help? It helps establish a new norm. A norm I have to accept, a norm my children question. The questions from my youngest daughter are now most difficult to answer. While she cried about missing her Dad’s death in the past, now she questions it throughly. Why did he have to die? Why did he get sick? What caused the sickness? Why couldn’t the Doctor fix him? Does everyone get sick and die?  Isn’t death for very old people? Why don’t I have a Dad? The pain my older daughter feels also gets quite intense, she wants one more day, just one more day, one more hug and kiss.

Over the three years, there have been lot of challenges and there have also been lots of smiles and laughter. I find even the happiest moment, I cry. Tears of joy for what we have accomplished but also tears of sadness of what we are missing.

I woke up this morning remembering the first time I had sushi, it was with David. The idea of eating raw meat was repulsive to me and I questioned why David eats Sushi. He eventually persuaded me to at least try it once. I remembered when I finally tasted it there was nothing remarkable about the taste but there was a huge satisfaction knowing I tried it. Over the years I developed a taste for sushi and it is something I now enjoy.

As I reflected on the sushi experience, I am reminded of how much David opened my mind to things.  He always encourage me to keep an open mind as he often said “Never say never”. I am thankful for this valuable lesson since there are many things that would have seemed impossible to me to navigate over the last three years but I knew I had to do it.

Last year, I opened my mind about a career opportunity and as a result we moved from the  US to Europe. It was the right decision but it was also a tough one since I knew I had to finally decide what to do with David’s things. For the next 6 months leading to the move, with lots of tears, smiles from memories, and determination, it did it and sorted his things in three groups (storage, donation, or move). His home office was the hardest one, so many memories in there, plus it was the best retreat for David and his daughters after work hours.

Three years later, David we continue to build on your legacy. You are too great a man and a father not to be missed forever.  Your memories are ever present and even your baby talks about you like she remembers so much, this makes me so happy.

Your untimely death will always bring me sadness, this is indisputable. I also promise to not use your death as a reason to short change life for me and your daughters.

Rest well my dearest David. I love you so much!

No new photos, just memories

21 Sunday Dec 2014

Posted by in Road to victory

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One of the things I do to comfort myself is to look at pictures of our life with David. I especially liked looking at the pictures he took on his phone because it felt like I was looking at things through David’s eyes. Overall, his phone became my priced possession with so many things reminding me of him.

Several months ago, I lost the phone. It was unthinkable, I thought it was just misplaced and that I would find it. I was afraid to ransack the whole house in fear that I would have a complete breakdown if I did not find it. I eventually searched the house with no luck. I took my car to the dealership and had them remove the seats and look in any possible crevices for the phone. Still the phone was no where to be found.

It was lost, I had a meltdown, I felt like I was losing something that allowed a physical connection to David. At that point, my Sister reminded me that even though the phone was lost, David was good about backing things up and that we should be able to restore anything he backed up.

We looked on the computer and found possible back up for the phone. I was unable to restore the phone until I had an extra phone but it helped me keep my sanity that there may be hope in restoring most of the content of David’s phone.

Last week, my Sister used her old phone to restore David’s phone and most things were restored from his backup. His last backup was May 13, 2013, our anniversary. I had a huge sense of relief and spent most of the night going through the phone, looking at pictures, and reading text messages we sent to each other over the years.

Viewing the pictures also brought a great amount of sadness. I realize how much our lives have changed and how much fun David used to have with the girls. I tried to click slower as I approached the end of the album because I knew it would be the end of pictures of my daughters with their Dad.

Now, all we have are memories, no new pictures with Daddy for almost a year. David, how I wish you were here to take pictures of the girls as they played in your office. How I wish you were here to record them as you made them laugh so hard. How I wish you were here to take pictures with me!

One of the things I now appreciate the most about the pictures David took was that they simply reflected our life as it was and not like my pictures that are more staged for the camera. He used to tell me not to delete any of the pictures especially those that I believed looked less glorious.

Below is a picture of the girls from David phone.

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Tell me stories about Daddy

18 Tuesday Mar 2014

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_MG_5438It was no surprise that Monday evening ended even crappier than the morning.  As we started homework my older daughter was already getting sad even my younger daughter recognized it and tried to make her happy.

By bedtime she broke down crying, she cried and talked about how much she missed her Dad.  She wondered why he did not get better, why he had to die now, why did he not die when she was older. She asked why she could not see him ever again. She looked out the window hoping she would find a shooting star so that she could wish for him to come back. She cried a lot, we cried a lot, I have had the same questions often.

As she started to settle down a bit she said that when she grows up, she wishes to find someone just like her Daddy.  WOW…I was again dumbfounded because while I know I cannot wish David back, I can truly wish the same for both girls because I know how lucky I was to have David.

I started telling her stories about her Dad.  She laugh hysterically as I told her how David used to dress her up and confuse the front and back of her dresses saying that men clothes are so much easier because the buttons are always in the front. How he used to wonder why girls had to wear tights and lifted her with tights to ensure that it fit just right (this is something we still do). I told her how he used to appeal to me to stop trying to feed her puree baby food such as tender beef spinach which were completely void of taste and asked that I feed her what we could eat. We laugh about so many things and she concluded that “Daddy is silly”.

I tried to assure her that even though Daddy is gone I will continue to do my best to make her happy. She asked that I should not talk about her Dad being gone but rather I should tell her more stories about him to make her laugh.

The best part of the evening was while we were laughing about the story, she said that “I actually forget that Daddy was gone, and for a minute I thought that Daddy was here”.