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Because He Lived

This week has been full of new experiences and old memories. I'm starting something new in a place I've been before - always with Greg but this time without. We spent summers here as a family of 3 but now it's just me and my son; our little family of 2.


I feared coming back to this place and the memories it holds Many of them, like the weeks adjusting to life as parents of a 2 month old, Greg's first Father's Day and two of our wedding anniversaries, are sweet. Life was more simple during the summers we spent here, far from home with only classes and each other to focus on. Others, like the bronchitis that kept Greg in bed and the times urgent care panicked after one look at his chest x-ray, are terrible. We teetered on the edge of disaster for weeks.


Still, it's been sweeter than I expected being back, The familiar sights and smells have awakened old memories in our son. He's loved talking about daddy and hearing the stories again and again as we traverse these familiar paths. But it's strange to be embarking on something new here; something without Greg.


I've been thinking about this change as something that's happening because Greg died. Like the long list of changes that have happened in the past 3.5 years, it's unlikely this would be happening if Greg was still here. There's a bitterness to that reality. It makes it difficult to fully embrace something when the road to it involved death.


That is until a woman I'm here with mentioned to me that she'd known Greg. She'd met him in a different location but because he was doing something similar to what I'm doing this week. She shared how good he was at it, how sought after he was by others, and how memorable he was even in the short time she knew him. Suddenly, my perspective changed.


I realized that the new thing I'm doing is as much because Greg lived as it is because he died. Greg's life shaped mine. His passions influenced me, the things he cared about and invested his life in marked me forever. The way I choose to spend my days will forever be impacted by Greg's life being woven so tightly into mine.


Yes things are changing, but not just because he died. They are also changing because he lived. So today, I am embracing the change, because it's also a way of embracing the ways  his life changed me.




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