Month: September 2015

So I recently had my “Weirdo night out”, or Widows night out if you would like me to be grammatically correct. My daughter started calling it my Weirdo night out when she thought that’s what I had said over the phone one night…. and it has just stuck! Ironically there is nothing weird about my Widow crew. They are all such wonderful people from every walk of life you could imagine up…… we may not have met and befriended each other at a pub or a party, but what brings us together is way deeper, more emotional and a lot stronger than most bonds that you can forge with another human being. When I wrote recently of the minority groups that I have found myself in over the years, well it was because I was sitting down one night and really reflecting on what path this old life has taken me down. When I separated from Ruby’s father 11 years ago when she was one, I was absolutely sure that being that I had already had a baby with another man that I would be seen as “damaged goods” by potential partners, and I assumed it would seem as though this “baggage” would always be lurking around somewhere and my child would be going off to see him, or always talking about him. In a perfect world that would have been the case I guess. Instead I fought for him to stay in her life even a smidgen, and even then he failed. So when I met Trenton, and he took Ruby on as his own without me even asking him to…. I felt so lucky. I felt like I had done something right, and that I wasn’t the piece of shit that I thought I was for screwing up the first family I had tried to have. It even took a little of the pain away that I felt for Rubes, who would often call out “Daddy” to random men on the street as she didn’t know what he looked like. How sad?? But how lucky we were. Trenton didn’t see Ruby as a hindrance, but more of a bonus. When I lost Trenton, it was very different than when I lost Rob. Rob was not dead, he was not this incredible person that had changed my little screwed up life for the better, and given me the gift of happiness and the shot at a real family life. He didn’t give me another child that would seal the deal on our gorgeous little family unit that we would go on adventures with, and experience real living with, struggle with, yet excel at new things with….. What Trenton gave us was the gift at a different life….. a better life, and we took it. The years we had with him cannot be compared to any other. These memories cannot be taken out of my heart where they are locked up for all of eternity, nor can they be forgotten…. they were my favourite years so far. He was hilarious, and a wonderful Dad, he was inappropriate in all the right ways, and he was extremely intelligent. He had an incredible group of loyal, devoted friends that just proved what an incredible person he was, and I loved them all instantly. He bought so much to this Earth in his short 37 years that would never have been, and could never have been if he had not walked it. When you are in the “right” relationship it is impossible to not be constantly learning new things. He would gently push me into new things, sometimes at the right times…. and even sometimes at the wrong. But always for good reason. You know it’s not often that you can honestly say that there is not a person on the Earth that doesn’t like someone…… but when you met Trenton that was honestly always the case. He left that impression on everyone… Shop keepers, taxi drivers, bar tenders, check out chicks, buskers…. random people on the street. I used to bag him out for the way his voice changed when he answered his phone. The first thing they teach you in customer service is that you can tell when someone talks on the phone with a smile on their face. This is how he answered the phone even at home…. his voice became animated and his face lit up. He was even polite to telemarketers, and I’m sure they couldn’t believe their luck even though he would not buy anything. If you called, he made you feel glad. There is not a day that goes by that I don’t wish I could take a call from him. His messages, emails and phone calls were always loving…. I wish so desperately now that I was not one of those people that deleted every message straight after I had read it. There were millions that I could have read, and reread over and over on those days where I felt I couldn’t get going. Lesson learned. At least not a call was made without ending it with “Love you.” These are the things that you remember when someone has died. That you did love them. That you did show it. That you were there for them. That you would have died for them. That you supported them at their lowest. I will never have any regrets in this way. Many times Trenton and I talked about what we would do if the other died suddenly. We spoke of the scenarios that might be, some almost ridiculous now that I think about them…. but we had “that talk” where we made it clear how the other one would deal with it, and move forward. Of course it’s much easier said than done….. but none the less I feel happy and relieved in the knowledge that I know what choices he would have made for the girls, and I have made the same one’s he would have since that night we lost him. Four months ago I met someone. It took me by surprise, and I won’t pretend it hasn’t been an interesting, tough, eye opening but wonderful experience. In the first two years since Trenton passed, I would have given anything to have had someone to curl up with at night when I cried myself to sleep, to have them waiting for me when I arrived home from work, to rub my neck when I thought my head would explode for all the images I could not shake……. to cry with, to laugh with, to talk to. During those years of lonely nights on the couch consoling myself, after hours of soothing unsoothable children…. the support that I needed I could not have. You cannot have these things immediately after losing the love of your life, because it’s the love of your life that you want to do these things for you, and they cannot. You spend hours asking the Universe why it took the one main thing that made your life worth living. The anger is unmeasurable, the grief unbearable. But here’s the clincher. These things do not go away when you feel love again. The sun shines a little brighter. Food tastes a little better. Problems seem a little easier. The light at the end of the tunnel seems a tiny bit closer. But you still grieve the man that you are still very much in love with. You cannot fall out of love with someone that was taken from you when you were still madly in love with them. It’s almost like the clock that was your life together stopped dead the minute their heart stopped. But all the others just kept on ticking. So I have been hesitant to share my news with the world. I feel lucky, blessed and happy that there is someone to face the world with each day…… but terrified that it will indicate that I have moved “on’ from the big guy…… which I have not. I do not want anyone to think that I have disrespected him by “being” with someone else.  I am lucky because this very amazing person has “made ” Trenton a part of our relationship. In fact he embraces it more than most could. He did not bat an eyelid when he first visited my house which is in some ways a shrine to the big guy (including the giant Trent head canvases I sleep surrounded by in my bedroom.) He has accepted without a hesitation the anxiety that riddles my daughters lives… the fact that I have three hours respite a week through the Council in which to see him alone….. the thousand questions a day about whether or not I will die when I am out at the shops, whether or not they will die in their sleep tonight, whether there are blood clots moving through their veins just waiting to take their life off them too…… I find it hard to bare….. and yes, that was an understated comment. He takes it in his stride and doesn’t allow it to waver his mood, he keeps everyone pepped up, and makes jokes to deflect from the craziness in the house. He is there when a cuddle is needed but knows when it is something he cannot help with. I don’t know what I did to deserve to meet someone so relaxed about my life, when I have found nothing about my life relaxing in a very long time…… but I know a good thing when I see it. And I know a genuine person when I meet them. He is both. So think twice before reacting to my news…… it is great. But it is new territory for the girls and I. I have not shared this with many people until now because of this….. but in true Emm fashion, here it is…… Enjoy the sunshine people. You never know how long it will shine. xxxxx

So once upon a time, I became a single Mum. I had met and been with Ruby’s father for three years when we had Ruby Tuesday….. and although not planned, we had talked a lot about having a family one day. I thought we were on the same page…… turns out we were not. For the first year of Ruby’s life we tag teamed our Friday and Saturday nights, so that every weekend we each had one night in with the baby, and one full night out until 5pm the following evening where we could do what we liked. Parting was what we did leading up to the pregnancy….. so partying is what we continued to do once she was born. This was only made more possible with my inability to be able to breastfeed her. We realised quite soon into the pregnancy (well I did anyway…) that Rob was not coping so well with the idea of becoming a Dad. The sacrifices that would surely come for him were starting to eat away at his mind…. and he was out more and more as I lay at home vomiting into a bucket all day and night. My reality kicked in the moment I hit ten weeks pregnant, because I ended up with nine full months of morning sickness…. so I had to literally give up everything fun and yummy overnight!!! I always find it takes the men a little longer to feel the changes that a baby brings to a family, because it isn’t physical at all for them until they are being woken all night and helping out during the days. To be honest I knew once Ruby was born that we were biding our time as a couple. When we celebrated Ruby’s first birthday, there were fifty odd adults, almost no kids and I was drinking bourbon and dry out of a giant stein glass at three am the next morning knowing we were really celebrating making it through a year without killing each other. We separated shortly afterwards. Single motherhood. My first minority group. Rob kept no regular contact up with Rubes. The only regular event in his life was taking drugs and partying actually. In the year that we lived six streets apart I think he had her overnight twice, and probably saw her ten times…. and that was while I was there. When Rubes was only 18 months old I met Trenton again, and we hooked up almost immediately. (We had met 12 months before as mates, through mates…. but both being partnered at the time we didn’t even consider getting together……. but we both admitted later on down the track that we thought of each other a lot in that year.) Things with Trenton went as I’d always hoped they would have with Rob. He loved hanging as a family, and taking Rubes out and doing all those wonderful things you get to do with young kids, watching the incredible world around you through their eyes. Christmases became like magic again, family catch ups were more often and more fun, and life just generally started to get good. Really bloody good. Within eight months almost to the day from the 8th of March in 2005 when we’d hooked up, he had proposed, I had accepted and on August the 11th 2006 the following year, we were ten weeks pregnant with Poppy and married. Like I’ve always said, when you know, you just know. Most of you people know about the rest of our story….. But aside from being a wonderful one for eight years, we were not without our problems. It was quite apparent to me from when Ruby hit 14 months old that she was different from the other kids. I thought she had hit the terrible two’s very early, and even though she didn’t walk until she was 19 months old, she could hold an adult conversation. It was bizarre. She was ridiculously intelligent and bright, but wouldn’t hit her physical and emotional developmental stages at the right time. Sometimes they were early, but sometimes very late. I took her to pediatricians, family doctors, a psychologist and an occupational therapist…. and even did a parenting technique course when she was just 20 months old as I thought maybe the Doc’s were right, and she had just inherited my strong personality type! I was wrong. Two weeks before her sixth birthday after years of struggling with her challenging behaviour, I met Dr Luke. Dr Luke listened to my story while Rubes played with the receptionist…. and then he asked me if I felt like I’d been ramming my head into a wall for nearly six years. I burst into tears at the realisation that I wasn’t just a shit Mum after all, but that there was actually going to be a reason for her behaviour. He diagnosed her with Aspergers Syndrome, and the rest is history really. As soon as I had an actual name to research, it was on! Trenton and I read thousands of personal stories, Autism sites, blogs and whatever books we could lay our hands on. I joined an intensive Autism course where I made some great contacts, and I started researching support groups. This would become my second Minority Group. Mother of a kid with special needs. We wanted to know everything we could to make this child’s life a great one. She had struggled with friendships her entire life….. and even at three at the daycare centre, the ladies would comment on how she’d scope the room in the morning, pin her sights on one kid, and come hell or high water that kid would have to play with her till the end of the day or she’d threaten to hurt them.  It didn’t make sense, and it hurt to get this feedback from the staff. At three and a half years old when Pops was born, it went further downhill and fast. We assumed she’s get over it after the idea of a sister had settled in her brain, but it never did “go back to normal.” So halfway through Prep when she was finally diagnosed, and after six months of spending every other day in the principal’s office in trouble even ending up with her own private table in the classroom where no one would sit next to her in fear of getting in trouble or being threatened…… we finally realised what was up. Her brain would forever be wired differently, she would never learn like a neurotypical child, and she would struggle socially for the rest of her entire life. A life sentence in some ways…… but there was nothing we could do but help her on her journey. When I found PSN (Parent Support Network) I still remember vividly walking into the Coonara Community House absolutely terrified at the thought of what other kinds of people I might find in such a group. What kinds of disabilities would I see? Would they be obvious? I needn’t have worried….. man I met some wonderful people that day. And then every fortnight for the next couple of years…… They turned my life around in the sense that they had already had so much time in the game, and they just simplified the rules for me. Not only that, but I realised how lucky I was with Rubes…… she may not be an easy kid, but she could do so much for herself where there were other kids there that would need 24 hour a day, 7 day a week care forever. I met a few families with ASD kids who also had second children that were not on the spectrum. We all quickly became mates. It’s incredible how different you can feel suddenly just by sitting with like minded people. Bought together by tragedy or loss, or just by being plain unlucky…. the camaraderie one feels when you’re “not the only one” is priceless and irreplaceable. Those years where Trenton and I fought and struggled to have Ruby’s voice heard at her school, with her peers, losing friendships, moving schools, moving homes….. those were some of the toughest years I remember. It seemed sometimes that nothing we did or tried made much of a difference to her at all, but exhausted the shit out of us and pushed us to breaking point many times. Poppy suffered by default as Ruby’s behaviour demanded all of our attention, and she also suffered at the hand of her sister who clearly envied the ease of Poppy’s life in comparison to her own. Lose, lose you could say. By eight she was medicated for her extreme OCD behaviour, and severe anxiety disorder…. and has not been able to not me medicated since. Although we’ve tried many times. I truly thought there could be nothing harder than watching your babies struggle in just simple everyday life, but clearly I had no vision of what was coming. I never took my relationship with Trenton for granted…… truthfully, not ever. I had experienced the kind with no help, high expectations and much anger and sadness. So I wasn’t letting a day pass by without letting my man know what he meant to me… in fact there was barely a few hours between each call, email or text message. The irony is not lost on me that I spent eight years telling him at least every other day that if he died on me and left me to raise those girls alone, that I would kill myself and then haunt him for the rest of our days in limbo……. I pushed him to quit smoking in fear of him dying stupidly at his own hand, and I begged him to stay healthy enough not to have a heart attack by the age of forty. It literally was my biggest fear because of the level of stress that we shared already in our home. Man I wish I’d never said those words to him. I know it would not have changed the outcome, but it kills me now to remember how many times I threatened it to him. I’m not remotely spiritual or superstitious, but damn I hope I didn’t jinx myself by always worrying that I would lose him. On the 23rd July 2013, I found my third Minority Group. Widowhood. The two years that have followed I can only hope will have been the worst the girls and I will ever suffer. Losing your Dad, your Hubby and best mate, your past, your present and what would have been your future all in the space of 24 hours is definitely not something that I’d like to see anyone else experience. But I have. When I discovered that there was only one support group running in Victoria for Widows and Widowers under the age of 50, I quickly joined up, only to work out weeks later that it wasn’t being run very well, and there had only been two meetups in the City, one of which had seen a brand new Widower and his baby turn up alone. I emailed the administrator offering my help, and she emailed me the link to become the new administrator. She was clearly not coping with her new role in life, but I knew I needed this group to become something, just as our PSN group had grown and then those wonderful families with special needs kids had become my lifelong friends. So was born the WWSG (Widow and Widower Support Group) and I can assure you I would not have survived in tact if I hadn’t discovered them. When we welcome our new members into the gang, we always say “Welcome to our group, we’re sorry you needed to find us, but glad that you did none the less.” It’s so important to have people around you that understand the pain you’re in, because no matter how well meaning a mate or family member can be, they can never really get what you’re going through until they have lived through it themselves. I woke up this morning feeling grateful after I’d had my Widows night out on Saturday night (which was an absolute ripper of a night by the way), followed by my Widows and kids luncheon yesterday which ended up on my deck in Montrose with the whole lot of the families coming back to my house for coffee. These people have pulled me through some shithouse times, and I have hopefully helped them through too. I can only hope that we will hang onto each other for as long as this ride shall take….. even if there is no end. Love you guys xxxx

One major thing I have been noticing over the last couple of years is that there are so many and varied levels and types of grief. Whether you’re the grandparent, parent, partner, friend or child, it really “does” make a difference to how you grieve. It also initially matters how you lose that person. And of course at what age…….. There is an instantaneous shock and grief when someone just drops dead, or dies very suddenly….. it is utter disbelief and shock, and to be honest the real reality of the loss doesn’t kick in for a while….. although the giant gaping hole that they leave behind is so immediate that it seems like a Mac truck has just taken out your little bubble…. that bubble that we don’t realise we have until it is gone. I went to bed one night watching Game of Thrones Season 1, episode four……. and eight months later I was watching episode five alone, drunk, shattered beyond repair with two kids that had needed to be medicated for six months just to get to sleep in my bed, in our new home without the nightmares of our man lying on the floor of my old bedroom gasping for air…… Bam. Just like that. If you were to wake up one day and be told that your life was about to be completely changed from that second forever onwards….. you still wouldn’t and couldn’t imagine what that really meant until you had lived, breathed and experienced it for yourself….. and thank God for that. A few years before we lost Trenton, we lost my Nana Val. One of the most independent and strongest women I’ve ever known, Nana was the biggest bogan ever. Hence the nickname Nana Bogan…. She wore mocco’s, drank Bundy and coke, was a heavy 50 ciggie’s a day smoker till nearly the end, and was the most generous, kind, loveable, (brutally honest….) and unique lady I ever had the pleasure of sharing my life with. She was the longest standing grandparent that I had the pleasure to be around (I think my gorgeous Grandma Dot died roughly ten years before…..) and I only wished I’d visited her more. I loved that even as a fully grown adult she’d ask me if I’d like her to chop up my roast chook and vege’s, and mix her yummy gravy all the way through to make it like a baby food consistency…. and of course I said yes every time! Nan died from Emphysema…. and in the end she had to push an oxygen bottle around. How humiliating it was…. especially for a woman that never drove or owned a car, who went dancing every Sat night with her mates, went on Bingo weekends away, who worked multiple jobs to support her boys and walked or public transported it everywhere she went, it was certainly the beginning of the end for her to lose this independence. But it did take a few years. Towards the end as she slowly started to cull most of her belongings. (She was the opposite of a hoarder…. even throwing Dad’s 50’s and 60’s record collection out while he was off fighting in Vietnam as they were taking up space under his bed!) We knew that she knew that her time was coming to an end. I still didn’t believe it until I got the call on that Monday saying she’d called an ambulance on the Sunday, walked herself to their stretcher bed, lay down and closed her eyes, and essentially never opened them back up again……. she survived a couple of days unconscious, just long enough for us to all be around her….. but she literally knew that week that it was her last week alive. When I spoke to her on the Monday before she sad to me “I’m not so good Darl, I think I’ll call an ambulance next week and go into hospital.” I was astounded and told her to not wait if she needed to be hospitalised, but she clearly had loose ends to tie up before she made that final journey. Incredible….. I am so glad I was holding her foot when she took that final breath. We all held on somehow, and it was my first experience of watching someone take their final ever breath. Perhaps not for everyone, and although absolutely devastated….. I knew she’d had a bloody good run…. and I knew she was no longer struggling just to breathe. It helps a little to know that the pain that someone is enduring on a daily basis is finally gone. I can only sense the tip of the iceberg of the pain suffered by people that lose their special person from Cancer, or similar, what an horrendous, sad, shattering, and possibly ultimately almost relieving end it becomes……  After watching my Uncle die a couple of years later from Esophagus Cancer, I saw the tip of that iceberg. The awful complications he had after they cut the cancer out, stretched his esophagus within an inch of it’s life, (and it never worked properly again…..) a tracheotomy that saw him bedridden with operation after operation and nil by mouth for four months solid before he chose to stop all treatment and just die. He couldn’t talk, and struggled to write….. so he was unable to express his frustration let alone his emotions. A life for Barry with no meat pies, coke, beer or ciggies, was certainly no life for him. Without being able to talk to his most adored nieces, and great nieces and nephews, his adored brother (my dad) and with Nan gone….. it was all too bloody much. He had lost one son to suicide, and another to the life of crime and drugs…… So Barry became another sad, painful and devastatingly too young a death in the family, and this really saw the end of my Dad’s side of the family gone….. I can only imagine how that will feel, if I’m lucky enough to be one of the last one’s standing. When I was eighteen, one of my best mates wrapped her new car around a pole not only killing herself, but another friend. Six months later another of our mates from the same class fell ten floors down a stairwell and died instantly…….. I never thought I would survive this time….. I realised later that I grieved more for Jules who had died in the car accident, but six months later at Rebecca’s funeral…… because I was not living with her like I was Trenton,  it took me this long to realise that Juls was really not coming back. In hindsight I can now see and actually feel what it did for Jul’s immediate family……. I now understand why they moved away and were never seen again. You just need to “go” when something like this happens. Or make a massive change occur. Not even far away, but away from the memories that engulf you……. In high school a very close friend and on again off again lover committed suicide…… Even though it was eight years after we were heavily in each others lives…. the questions that arise when someone has died by suicide are endless. And unanswerable……. Man….. there is no right or easy way to grieve….. you might bottle it up, never to let it escape….. you might question it repetitively and you might refuse to question it at all…… you may talk about it all day long, and you may refuse to mention them out aloud again….. I know mine has been totally private, and indirectly public all at once. I have struggled to show it in person, yet poured it out brutally via my blogs. When I sit in the psychologists room I seem to be able to make out like I’m doing really well, and then when I should really be doing well I seem to lose it completely in front of someone that I may not have chosen to lose it in front of. There is no rhyme or reason, and it is exactly that unpredictably itself that makes it all so fucking hard. My poor kids have definitely seen the worst of me…… yet they are the very ones who understand my loss the most in this house. So I guess I shall continue to keep on keeping on, for as long as I can……  I was left behind for some bloody reason……. I guess I will eventually find out. xxx

Well here I am, staring at the only unopened present left from today’s celebrations, our third Fathers Day without the girls Dad. We started the weekend off with a bang….. my beautiful Auntie’s and the most adored Great Auntie’s 89th birthday. It was a wonderful day…… Not only did the sun come out after a shitty week of rain, but all of the family came from everywhere to share this amazing woman’s birthday, life and lifelong friends. My Auntie Thelma was also widowed fairly young, and never remarried. She never left the family home when she married, and her and my Uncle Beau stayed living with my Grandma Dot who would eventually lose her husband too, my Mother’s father, when my Mum was only 21.  She stayed on with Beau after they had their first baby Marilyn, and they raised this daughter at the same time that Thelma’s Mum raised my Mum. So my Mum and her niece Marilyn are actually 6 months apart in age…… my Auntie is 24 years older than my Mum. Confused? Try explaining that one to your kids! So I adore celebrating the life of someone that has deserved to live it. Never one to complain, Thelma has been a battler all her life. She has survived so many changes in this Country since 1926…. what a incredible journey she has had, and what amazing stories she must know? She is smart and witty, and never bats an eyelid, even at the completely inappropriate things that come out of my daughters mouths these days. (Now more than ever.) She is a dedicated Catholic, with a heart of gold. In so many ways she is a contradiction, because she has embraced all things modern, like gay marriage, and living out of wedlock and having multiple fathers in one family…… like I said, nothing seems to phase her. Not that these things should, but lets be honest….. at the ripe old age of 89….. how many people are so open minded?! Anyway, a day spent with my extended family that I rarely see, in the old home I grew up in, with my sisters, their families and my Mum and dad….. it was just what I needed after the last few exhausting weeks. In the last week alone I have had a severe reaction to some new medication a specialist put me on, a police visit from two senior police women after Ruby ran out of school and all the way home as she wasn’t happy with the punishments that were being dished out to her for her shit behaviour in class….. and about three hours sleep a night due to my skin feeling like it is on fire….. all while trying to fill in almost full time hours for a co worker that took holidays…. a fabulous end to four weeks of emotional hell I would say! I always do like to end things with a bang……… Meanwhile in the back of my mind I was quietly waiting for the Father’s day crap to unfold…. the stall the previous week went off without too much of a hitch for once…. we concentrated on Pop who we were seeing today…. and this year Ruby decided to have a Father’s Day lunch with Rob, so she spent some money on a couple of gifts for him. Which was hard and weird for us, but turned out to be really good for them. I am glad. She has been without him for 11 of her twelve years in reality, so she has every right to see him, however little she gets from him. This morning we woke and spent our energy on Pop (my Dad.) In my eyes he is one of the greatest Dad’s to ever have walked the Earth (alongside Trenton of course) and I will never allow him to not know this. He knows as well as I that I wouldn’t have survived this last to years without him by my side. I cooked up a mega brekky for my sis and her hubby, their mates and the kids, Grandma Pop and I… and it was heaven. The girls gave out their pressies, and we ate and drank and just felt the love in the air. The girls were surprisingly happy this year. Poppy in particular (who I’d worried about more of course, not having anyone to celebrate it with unlike Rubes….) but she was amazing. And really funny. She headed off with my sis and bro in law, (happily I might add) and allowed me to nap for the arvo while they took her on a massive walk and play in the park. It all just fell into place for once. We headed off at four to collect Rubes and head out for dinner at a mates, and really, it all went amazingly well considering I was expecting the worst….. So a few cans later, a little reminiscing, and the old heart starts pounding again at the thought of never seeing this man again in the actual flesh. Yeah…. we survived another milestone, another painful day that other people will forever be celebrating with loved ones….. happily, while we’re not. Go us….. I am so proud of my girls, they handled it like two old souls that have seen way too much for their short years on this Earth. Troopers. Then I sat to have another drink, and I noticed the unopened pressie. And I realised in the continuous distractions that we threw at those girls today, that Poppy forgot to unwrap the present she bought at the stall for Trenton. I know she was hanging to all week…. a mug with the best Daddy on earth on it, and a choccy love heart card that she could eat once she’d opened it for him.  I have kept the tradition going for them both, that they can go to the Father’s day stall each year, pick whatever they wanted for their Dad, but then they could open it on Father’s day on his behalf, and keep whatever they bought for him. Strange…. a little…… but so far it has worked. The underlying meaning is not lost on me…….. I do not think for a second that she is over it. Jesus you only have to spend a week putting her to bed to see that this is years away. But we are getting to the point where even in the face of utter devastation, you can still find a little light to keep you plodding through. Thank God hey? These are the tiny things that keep me going each day. This leads us to believe that there is “life” after a death. There is. As a matter of fact, it just so happens to keep moving forward, even if you wish that it would not. But thems the breaks kid. It is what it is.  So Happy Fathers day to a man who took me on, even though I had someone else’s child in tow…… without the bat of an eyelid (just like my Auntie) and then created another wonderful daughter with me to be shared with Rubes and the family, hopefully for a shitload longer that he himself got to experience them both. I’ve said it before and dammit I’ll say it again…… this life can be a cruel bastard, and if you’re not scooping everything up and holding it tight…… well you’re an idiot quite frankly.  So suck in every minute with whoever is there to enjoy the ride…….. I am certainly going to try. xxxxxxx