A Year and a Half....

Ernie had his infusion yesterday.  We got there, did the pre-stuff, and trotted to the infusion area, picked a chair, hit the magazine rack, got some tea and settled in.  It felt so remarkably routine and familiar.  I was too bleary to comment on it but yesterday evening Ernie mentioned it as well.  Not that it's surprising....it's been a year and a half that we've doing this but the sheer familiarity of it struck us both.

A year and a half.  Amazing.  Judi's been dead a year and seven months yesterday.  Dead.  I was going to write gone but that seemed too polite.  She's dead.  There's a stack of boxes and things we brought from my mother's house in the living room.  I noticed that Ernie had included a framed picture my mother had of Judi and me.  We were raking leaves at her house in Clemson and Ernie said, "oh, let's take one of the sisters."  It's been sitting there upside down and I haven't wanted to turn it over.  But the other evening I thought to myself that it's been a year and a half....I should be able to look at a picture of my sister without crying.  So I turned it over and....well....you guess it.  I teared up.  I thought it would get easier but it really doesn't seem to.  So I found a spot we could hang the picture and asked Ernie to put it up.  I need to be able to look at the picture without crying and I think Owen will like having it up as well.

I remember the day she called me at work to tell me that her cancer was back and not expected to go into remission again.  I was walking down the hallway at work looking for a spot of privacy and I kind of yelled "WHAT" in a panicked voice and she said it again...and then she kept saying "I'm so sorry Cynthia, I'm so sorry."  Because she knew....she knew how much I would miss her.  I think of that sometimes....of her crying as she told me she was sorry.

So I'm going to look at this picture every day....at the bottom of the stairway in the living room.  And maybe I'll stop crying when I see it.  Maybe I'll smile.