Dear Family
Dear Family, We are coming up on the one year anniversary of Meme's passing. This past year has been a difficult one for our family. Each of us feeling her significant loss in our own ways. We don't talk about it with each other much--other than the ocassional comment about how much we miss her. We laugh over memories sometimes and smile sadly as the conversation is left to drift away before the pain has a chance to overwhelm us. We keep that part to ourselves. At least, I know I have. I've felt like I couldn't lay this immense weight on anyone else, especially as everyone else that could even understand how precious she was was hurting too. I've held my pain close, swaddled in a cloak of busyness and misleading smiles. I tried to dive into my kids' activities and our pre-planned trips, and visiting friends to cover the truth. I was dying a slow death of my own. Only Ivan really saw ugly it was, how bad I got. I felt responsibility weighing on me. The respon...