Still Smiling

I’m still smiling today…even though I had a really long day at work. Work friends and member friends stopped by to chat with me today and see my tattoo. Every time I look down it makes me teary and also brightens my day at the same time. It doesn’t feel great when my sleeve rubs it, but other than that it doesn’t hurt and looks great.

My brain has been replaying good memories for me instead of the “hospice days loop”…such a relief…too many days of that and I felt like I was standing on the rim of a very black hole…and jumping in was not as scary as it should have been. The black hole is very much still there, but I don’t feel like I’m flirting with the edge quite so much.

Today I was thinking about the only time in our 25 years together that Jason and I really ever spent any time apart. It was the summer in between our Sophomore and Junior years of college. Jason had a temp job in Red Wing working at a factory cutting up fruits and vegetables. It was a miserable job…like 40 degrees in there…he had to dress warm…boots and everything that summer. I was working at Menards in Wausau and only had every other weekend off. So we took turns visiting each other every other weekend. Those two weeks in between sure were long. We spent a lot of time at night after our families went to bed meeting in chat rooms using good ole dial-up internet.

That was the summer the movie “Armageddon” came out. One of the weekends that Jason came to visit me he bought the soundtrack of that movie for me. In fact, I just found it in our basement the other day…one of the few CD’s we had saved. Our wedding song “I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing” by Aerosmith was from that movie. And that was also the song that we danced to for the last time at Jeremy and Cheryl’s wedding 11 days before he died. Memories I don’t ever want to forget.