Isn’t it funny how a word or phrases mean completely different things depending on where we are in our lives? I always loved those wooden “family” signs and canvas pictures. Now they make me sad. My family is not complete anymore. We are missing one very important guy and I’m not ready to accept that my family now looks very different than it did…than all of my friends’ families do. That word reminds me I don’t have it all anymore.

My monogram on all of my adorable sweatshirts…I haven’t wanted to wear them because they don’t quite feel right. He’s gone. It’s his last name on those with me. I know that won’t change, but I just don’t want to wear them right now. The curls and cuteness of them make me mad. I don’t see cute and happiness in the swirls, I see sadness.

The quotes on the boys shirts “kind like my parents”… I looked at that the other day and thought, “yeah but one is dead”. I can’t go into Carter’s right now because there’s too many of those shirts and even though I used to snatch them up, I don’t even want the boys to wear them right now. Another reminder of what I don’t have. What they don’t have. Their dad is gone. 

Even the phrases “good morning” and “have a good day” don’t work for me right now. It’s not a good morning. Eddie is gone and everyday I wake up it’s a new day, but I’m reminded that he’s not here…never coming back, so no, it’s not good. I have a dear friend who simply texts “morning” to me each day. This is fitting. It is morning and here we go again with another day filled with a wild card of emotions. As for “have a good day”…it may be an okay day, but while I’m picking up the pieces of my shattered life that seem to be all over, it won’t be a good day. Not for a while. There may be good moments, but on my emotional scale, my goal is “okay” each day right now. It beats “shitty”.

My therapist reminds me, that this is all temporary and the only things permanent are death and taxes. Even so, this temporary place I’m in sucks, especially because Eddie being gone, is permanent. Maybe the change of all of those words and phrases are only temporary and I’ll find a new meaning to them when I get to a better place…maybe even a “good” place.