The First Day...

This is my first post to this blog, I needed a place to write it all down.

It is late summer, it is still hot during the day but the nights want a sweater. This is usually one of my favorite times of year. The last trips in the boat, fires at night. I love the beginning of harvest, waiting for leaves to change colors, watching pumpkins turn orange and get fat.

This year everything is different. It would take more than a sweater or a fire to warm me, and it doesn't feel like the begining of anything. I don't want things to be like they were before, I want time to stop right here. I want the world to stop and cry and miss her like I do. Nothing is the same, nothing is the same.

On April 19Th of this year my daughter Stevie left her body and traveled where ever it is that people without a body do. I laid next to her in a narrow hospital bed and covered her lips, cheeks and eyes with kisses and tears as she took her last breaths. My sweet girl was 19 years old.

I am a wreck without her. This is the hardest thing a mother will ever be asked to endure. Not that anyone ever asked. There is nothing right or good about it, and there is no comfort you just move like a hand on a clock one second at a time until an hour has passed, a day has passed and hopefully some of the pain has passed.

She was my summer,

my full moon,

my every breath

my reason for getting up in the morning.

She was the birds singing,

the smell of peaches,

soft petals,

and dandelions blowing in the wind.

She was my heart beating,

my every dream,

my teacher,

warm feet in my bed on a cold morning.

She was every word ever written,

Every love song written by a boy in love,

all things sweet and good

and every sunset.

I am trying to find my way without her. I am surrounded by people but I feel like I am under water, all alone. I keep looking for her, I keep waiting for her. I keep falling on my knees and asking my God to wake me from this terrible dream I am trapped in that belongs to someone else.

I will document my long walk down this unknown road. I will tell her story in little pieces and I will tell my own. You will see that it is hard to tell where she ends and I begin.

This is just one of many many days.

Gabriell