The kids wake up...They see my face...Connor walks out and publishes on Facebook," Robert A. Schmitt, RIP, may you find lots of golf and beer in heaven Dad,"......Alexa is calm, how can she possibly accept or process this loss...she's been his Princess all her life...they had something really special, and stuck up for each other....this will take years.
We go to lunch,we laugh,and return home to teenage boys and their moms, women I've seen in passing, at our door....I expected to be alone.....and their open hearts melt me........the boys are soon shooting hoops....neighbors arrive with food, the Mormons show up with flowers, food and offers of help...the Chapel shows up offering sympathy and shoulders...
I've always been alone......I'm not anymore.....
We will have a service for Bob, Mark and Jen will do a video....I am seeing a holiness in people I never saw before.....I am seeing God in losing Bob....
His sister, my dad and his family are all coming for the memorial....
Bob's golf buddies are shocked....they expected he'd be back to work.....
May 7th....always a reliable soldier....Bobby was about 6 months on the dot...
So this ends my Blog of Cancer.....now we know how it turned out.....The memorial I will get uploaded here as soon as I figure out HOW - simply because our passionate chemistry explodes off the photos! When Bob and I were in a room, no one else WAS, so great was our powerful attraction....so you all will have to have a peak...
Grieving - there are lots of sources, I"m not going to journal my walk in grief...nor detail the influx of the hundreds of cards we are to receive (writing this in June now!), nor the mourning of a town, a community, a neighborhood or a family who lost someone too young....
And a word.....one of the Docs told me, its just not fair....and in this I sadly disagree....
Bob came by this honestly... he smoked and drank for years,in his "Pre-Mish years" as he called them and in his own words , "didn't CARE to live a long life..." not realizing that one day he WOULD care, and would have a life he cherished.......I am a better nurse/fitness/yoga teacher for this...and I tell that to people.....don't write yourself off too soon.....life might surprise you and GET REALLY GOOD one day.......Be healthy and READY for it!!!!!
Here's me a few days before Bob's diagnosis,worried about him,but made him take some pix in one of Val's T-shirts for her web site....Looking fit and healthy.....less than 6 months later....as the WIFE of a man with cancer, I had to take this picture as I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror:
The picture of what cancer does to those left...I wouldn't be honest if I didn't show you how I looked in the days following Bob's death......And at Alexa's graduation,feeling the empty seat beside me..but knowing Mom and the kids are with me, and we are still alive.
Oh Michelle....you are simply amazing!! I'm in tears as I write this, seeing these entries for the first time. What you have gone through no one should have to...Here's to the future! Love, MB
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