Facebook Archive - March 2018

March 14 - Ian: “I have a hard time keeping track of who you’re dating and who you’re just hanging out with.”
Me: “You’re not the only one, dude.”

March 17 - (at Oceanfront for Shamrock 8K) Ian: “Next time can we bring bikes?” 

March 17 - Ian: “But you haven’t given up on love, have you? Oh I guess that’s impossible since you’ll always love me.”

March 25 - I forced my child to use the “push to talk” feature in his online game so the whole party doesn’t have to listen to him narrate the scenario. You’re welcome, fellow gamers.

March 28 - 

I showed Ian the video that Rich made for him back in 2012. He didn't like it very much. He said it didn't look like Daddy. 

My mom will get teary-eyed and say that I kept Rich alive long enough for Ian to know him. That if he had died in 2012, Ian would have never known him. 

But it does make me a little sad that the person Ian remembers is not the man I fell in love with. I have said that my husband went away in the summer of 2014 after his second failed surgery. And that's right about when Ian started having his own memories of him. 

My son and I love and miss two totally different people. 

I showed Ian one of the videos Rich made just before accepting hospice. It was about his time in the Army. Ian liked that video much better. It looked like his dad (sunken cheeks, bushy grey beard, PICC line in his arm). And he liked the specifics of the story versus the generic "I love you" that Rich sent out to his three-year-old son. 

I guess my elephant analogy (the blind men arguing that it's a rope, a pipe, a fan, or a tree) from his eulogy is accurate after all. Rich is all of those things.