10 Years

I guess I don't recall ever being able to think about a decade as a block of time as I clearly as I can now. Ten years ago this month, I met this girl from Massachusetts with a kind of funny accent...I can blink and see a trillion images of her and I through our ten years; or 8.5 as I need to remind myself everyday....so many memories.
Soon I will have been widowed longer than I was married. Weird facts like that pop into my head too often.

Almost 14 Months....

Wow.
I made it.
The first of all the days of the year without her have passed.
I am happy; perhaps the happiest, or at least the most content with myself, I have ever been. She has left me with gifts that are beyond anything I could have ever imagined. The gift of knowing how precious this is. The gift of being able to forget about everything I thought was stressful. The gift of sharing it all. The little angel I have on my shoulder and the other right down the hall sleeping blissfully....

Not a day has gone by without thinking of what I had. But I am so grateful for what I have and how my experience has helped me grow into the person I am today. I only wish Amanda knew the new me and how much of a role she played in what I am becoming. I am eternally grateful for the people in my life who have stood by me. I am really excited about the new people entering my life who are giving me hope...

Randomly, the only tv show I watch is 24, last night on 24 - at the end, Jack's girlfriend is killed. He lost his wife in the first season of the show. Anyway, I watched as the doctor came out of the operating room - Jack looked up and the doctor didnt need to say a thing. I flashed right back to that moment that was my reality....when the doctor walked in and didnt need to say a thing... Jack walked in to the room where his love was, as I did....he cried, he gave her a kiss...as I did. Excepy this isn't a tv show or movie.
Last night I cried for the first time in a really long time.

One year ago, I was spending one of my last nights in the hospital with Amanda before she became outpatient and we "moved in" with my parents given their proximity to the hospital.
Our days went something like this: Wake up around 6am when the nurse came in to take Amanda's vitals, call the NICU with our secret code to see how Gianna was doing (we were in two different hospitals), walk to Dunkin soon after for my iced coffee, get breakfast, log in to my pc to try to work for a few hours before chemo at 10am, get a "pass" to take ourselves to the NICU to spend lots of time with baby and then sometimes even go out for dinner. I was recently telling someone the story and they were shocked to hear it all happened in less than 5 weeks. Normal life one day, you have cancer, check into a hospital now phone call the next, Gianna born 3 days after that 10 weeks early and Amanda gone a month later. Really. I cant stress enough how weird everything seems. I'm really trying to figure things out and luckily I have Gianna to keep me plenty occupied and amused but.... I've been overloading myself with "stuff" to keep me busy; work, mba, baby stuff, going out etc etc but am I just delaying something? Who knows. Progress is a weird thing. I had a lot of random live feeling flashbacks not too long ago; I described them to someone really close to me as nightmares, except I'm awake and they are real...
I want to write about the last day we had together. But not today...