GoodWill

It's Tuesday and all I can think about is, "Happy 8 weeks, Will." Though today marks 11 weeks, Will is forever etched in our hearts and minds at eight. I seek comfort in the fact that his birthday and his funeral were both on Tuesdays, so that when I wake up on Tuesday mornings, I can cancel out our goodbyes with thoughts of our hellos. I can think of the joy in hearing his first breath and his most beautiful first cry.

We are getting back to 'normal' at our house. The girls are back to school, Mark is back to work and we are figuring out nighttime, which was a bit of a struggle for a while. We have conquered late night anxiety, and all three girls are falling right to sleep. I no longer have to walk the girls into school in the morning, they go on their own. We still are battling nightmares, but they are not every night now, so I feel like we are making progress.

Now that the girls are back, I find myself with no one to take care of. The school days are long. Though I wish I were back to work to keep myself occupied, I know that walking back into school 2 weeks before finals would not be fair to my students. I also don't want to look back on this time and feel like I jumped right back in. Though I hate being at home, I am sure the quiet and the pain of being here is probably good for me. I want to be able to look back on this time and remember how much it hurt. What a void he left in our lives. That he was worth taking time to grieve.

Though the girls were worried about heading back to school, I think they were more worried about leaving me in an empty house surrounded by all of his things. So, they have put me to work. They have created a list of 25 days of "Good Will" that I have to carry out in December. These girls continue to amaze me with their big hearts.

My days have been filled volunteering at different non-profits around town or donating his things to people who need them. My favorite so far though has been delivering his flowers. We received some absolutely beautiful flowers for Will's funeral. Though I hope not to offend anyone that sent these beautiful bouquets, I have given most of them away so that someone else can also enjoy their beauty before the die. Flowers to me have always been more about the sentiment than the flowers themselves. So, I have spent a few of my afternoons taking flowers to area nursing homes and finding a "William" to spend my afternoon with. I'll keep you posted on my adventures over the next 25 days, but I can already tell you, so many of my encounters have had God's hands all over them.