Bob is Always with Me

Approaching the 5th year anniversary of Bob's passing, I wanted to take a visual inventory of just how much he is still in my life. Every morning, afternoon, and evening, he is with me. Saturdays sitting at my computer, evenings relaxing on the couch, I am surrounded by his things, gifts he's given to me, and even gifts I gave to him that I now own. Every piece of pottery he created, unique gifts from Hawaii, his guitar he adored, the clothing he once wore. It's not that I need to be reminded of my loss; having all of these things fills the air with his spirit, and I know he is with me, and that's comforting.

Below is a slideshow of the photos I took of the things I see everyday around my house...


If you don't have Flash, copy and paste this link into your browser to see the album.
https://picasaweb.google.com/109746190036513054714/BobAroundTheHouse?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCO7xyuLr86DsuAE&feat=directlink

Since October 2006

It's June of 2011. It's been almost five years since Bob died. Unbelievable. In fact, I haven't really thought about that until right now. FIVE YEARS this October. It's so hard to believe, I cannot put my feelings into words at the moment. It's excruciating not having him in my life. Every day, there are things I want to tell him, to talk to him about.
Since he's been gone, the world seems to have progressed rapidly. In my personal life, a lot has happened. With every event and new family situation, I miss Bob. My dad had bypass surgery a couple of years ago. Bob and I would've talked a lot about that. I got married last June. Bob, obviously, would've been there. The officiant talked about Bob, which brought my parents and I to tears. Just a few months ago, dad had knee replacement surgery. Soon, mom will have a hip replacement. I want to talk to him about OUR parents. I want him to be here now and be there in the future, when our parents grow old and need assistance. Bob and I could help each other. But he's not here. I feel alone.
Another family tragedy happened recently. My uncle, mom's brother, died suddenly. Bob would have been equally shocked and saddened as I. We would've gone to Paul's memorial as a family. Paul spent many holidays and vacations with us. Bob probably had memories of Paul I never knew.
But, as my blog has mentioned before, life goes on. Families continue to deal with the little things and the big things in life. That's just what life is. We don't know what's around the corner and can't genuinely prepare for anything. We live, day to day, and try to enjoy it as best as possible and just cherish family and friends and health. That's all we can do.

A Note


This evening I started craving soup for dinner. My brain started buzzing. It's raining and snowing, I've got lots of vegetables in the fridge to use, I could make a lot of it and freeze the rest, I've got some soup base seasoning to boost the flavor, should I use a recipe from a book or should I throw stuff together, on and on ran my thoughts. Among my rows of cookbooks is one called Thai. It was a Christmas gift to my brother from me many years ago. I was flipping through it, looking for soup recipes, when I came upon this piece of paper with his handwriting. Ingredients needed for egg rolls. I was overcome with emotion. My hunger turned to nausea. Here he was. My beloved brother that was once alive on this earth, scribbling a list of things to buy at the food store. It was a shock to my system. It was one of those moments I found myself caught between my daily reality and my life reality, if that makes sense. I'm living, I'm going on about my days, I'm looking through cookbooks, and then the heavy reality presents itself. It's a quiet, empty feeling.

One of the most tragic, difficult aspects of losing a loved one is just not being able to talk to them. I just want to talk to him. I want to have a conversation with him, it doesn't matter what about. I do talk to him in my mind, but, obviously, it's not the same. I want to ask him if he made those egg rolls. And if he made them for himself or a friend or if he took them to a party. How'd they turn out? Then we'd talk about his delicious marinated chicken kabobs he used to make for our 4th of July parties. But I can't call him. I'm left with a note, written one day, years ago, when he was looking through a cookbook.