It's a rollercoaster ride...

Sorrow does funny things to you. And it comes from out of nowhere. It’s the little things that catch me off guard. I can sit here and look at her picture on my desk without breaking down. But when I found her glucose meter in the downstairs bathroom last night, I was a mess. I’ve been wearing one of her rings and it makes me feel better, but one of the reasons I wanted to trade in my car is because I wanted one that she had never ridden in. I can look at the little stick-figure with the “I love you” she wrote on our calendar on the refrigerator and smile, but finding a sticky note that she had written a phone number on has me sobbing my eyes out. I got a daisy tattoo on my foot with her name on it, and I see it everyday- but junk mail that comes addressed to her tears at my heart. It’s irrational, and it doesn’t make sense.

I have a sort of funny, mostly ironic thought to share... when I was in my senior year of high school, I was getting phone calls from all kinds of military recruiters. One particularly zealous one was "Buddy" from the Navy. I don't know why the Navy wanted me so badly, but that man must have called at least four times a week. It got to the point where I just refused to answer the phone. Finally Emily, who was the one who mostly got stuck talking to him, was fed up with him calling. So one day she sadly told him, "Buddy, you need to stop calling for Melissa. She died." Mom was sooo mad that she said that, but I'll tell you what- I never heard from another one again. And oh, we laughed!
Emily and I both registered as Democrats so we could vote in the primary this year. Our phone has been ringing off the hook with people calling to get us to vote for Hillary, or vote for Obama. Mom said she got a call from one of those political people asking for me, and when she said I wasn't home, they asked for Emily. It's ironic now that we told them the same thing she told Buddy from the Navy, only in our case--- it's a horrible truth. Irony isn't all it's cracked up to be.

I was talking to my best friend Debbie last night. She’s lost both of her parents to cancer, and even though the loss is different, it’s still sorrow, and she’s been through it. In fact, she said, “Melissa, grief is a sick, sick club to be a member of.” And she’s right. It’s like riding a rollercoaster blindfolded. You’re going up the hill, and you know that you’re going to have to drop, but you just simply can’t see it coming.