Three Years

Although it is still March 2nd in the US, over here in Asia, the date is already March 3rd. As I am sure all three of my readers know, yesterday was the 3rd anniversary of Laurie’s death. Three years. I thought quite a bit about this yesterday. Three years ago, Laurie decided (as Katie had said once) to “stop living”. This morning I continued that thought – all our memories of Laurie will be of “young Laurie” – the one that was never older than 20. On the surface that stinks because we’re all going to age, put on weight, add wrinkles, turn gray, etc. but Laurie will always be a happy, perky girl. Kind of a bummer for us who will still age.

But, on a much deeper level, this concept is deeply, utterly tragic. Laurie herself will not get to experience college graduation, marriage, parenting, career, travel, grandchildren, and so much more. For us as her family and friends, we miss out too by not having her in our contemporaneous memories, in our photos, in our videos. (However, as Chris would say here – that’s the beauty of PhotoShop… The problem with that is the aging factor – sorry, T.) Truth be told – we have before us life without a dearly loved one. Uber pain.

So, maybe the three of you are wondering how I am doing with this. Shock is gone. Open wound is gone. Even to an extent, the omnipresent pain has subsided. I think I have learned to walk with a sort of limp. In the heat of our searing pain, I had publicly written about my internal questioning. I had seen myself as busted into thousands of broken pieces, and had wondered how they would fit back together. What would that look like? Could I be made fully whole again. Well, I know that my 2008 reality is not as choice as I would have wanted. I now recognize that some of the pieces never found their way back together. The 2008 Greg is more pessimistic and less good-humored (really). I now recognize that there is a very real element of depression in my life. I have more weight on my back, and I definitely laugh less. I find it more difficult to be spontaneous, and my daily walk with the Lord is a slow stroll with less talking. I feel that I am still in a “before” picture, knowing that “after” is going to be so much better. I want to be changed, but do not know when or how that will happen. I just know that I am not who I had hoped to be – yet.

In a future post, I’ll write more about my Laurie thoughts. This post was more about where I’m at right now. Travel has been intense lately (over 20,000 flight miles in the past month alone!). I came home from the US yesterday, and am flying to Bangkok today. On the happy outlook: our vacation to Italy is in 3 weeks! We also just bought tickets for a vacation in Cambodia this June, and a major vacation to Vietnam in July.

I love and miss my family. Seeing Chris last weekend was awesome. I need to reflect on that more.

Love always

greg