Valentine's Day Weekend

Ron here...

I can't believe it's Wednesday night already! I did not mean to wait so long to update, but it's amazing how little time there actually is in a day.

Valentine's Day weekend was okay for us, but there were some pretty rough moments for me and for Millie. Probably more so for me, but Millie was certainly hurting. Our family has never been really big on Hallmark holidays. Cards, flowers, candy and that's about it. It was hard not to think about Beccee though. I thought a lot about the letter I wrote her last Valentine's Day and the one I wrote in December for her birthday. I had promised I'd write by this Valentine's Day, and I kept my promise. It was a pretty brutal time writing that letter. I wish I could say I felt better afterward, but I can't. The last time I remember a genuine sense of relief after crying was the night of the Gerard/Benet concert. Beccee and I had a minor fight and I ended up pretty upset about our whole situation. I remember telling her all I wanted was to feel like a normal family again. After we talked, and after I had cried it out, things felt better. They weren't actually better. I guess it helped at the time not knowing the difference.

Church on Sunday was much better for me than the previous Sunday. I didn't have that sense of surprise seeing the wedding scene on the stage this time, and I decided to sit stage left, up front where I never usually sit. It wasn't a conscious decision to try to hide, but it may have been a subconscious one. Marcel had joined the worship band as a special guest and I really wanted to sit close to him. Marcel and Beccee had been friends for many years and played together in bands. It was really cool to see Marcel up on stage at "our" church. (I know it's not our church, but you know what I mean.) It made me smile to know that Marcel was there because of Beccee and I knew how happy that would have made her. Then I started to picture Beccee standing next to me and I could see her as clear as if she really was standing there. While the band was playing music, she was smiling, singing, clapping and dancing along. When the song was over, she was cheering and doing that obnoxiously loud finger-in-the-mouth whistle that she would do. Man, that was crazy loud! It was hard for me to keep it together standing there thinking of her.

When the worship music set was finished, I thought about sneaking out of the sanctuary and hanging out in the green room with the musicians. I'm not really sure why I stayed put, especially after the week before and how uncomfortable I was, but I didn't move. I figured I'd ride this service out by myself. Listening to Pastor Terry's sermon was nowhere near as difficult this time, which was nice. About fifteen minutes into the sermon, Marcel found me and sat down in the seat next to me. I felt like someone had given me a Valentine's Day present.

Later that afternoon, I went to pick up the girls at Beccee's mom and dad's house where they spent a few hours. At someone's suggestion, I thought it would be a good idea to have the girls make Valentine's cards for Beccee that we could tie to balloons and let them fly to the sky. We had to trim some of the weight off the homemade Valentine's cards to get them to lift off even with six balloons. It was starting to get dark and chilly, but the three of us went outside with Mike and Carol close by taking some pictures. We said a quick prayer and let the balloons go. They started going up, but sadly a draft took them into a very tall tree where they got stuck about 40 feet off the ground. Millie started to cry, but she wasn't even looking up. She was actually starting cry before the balloons even touched the tree. She was still sad about Beccee. So was I. So was Emma.

On Monday, I distracted myself by fixating on dumping the minivan for a Mazda3. It was a great time-and-energy-consuming task to locate cars that were close enough for me to drive to and to figure out what I could reasonably expect to get for a trade on the minivan. Tuesday morning I drove up to Neenah, test drove a car and drove away with it a couple hours later. The price was two thousand dollars cheaper than any other comparable car within 75 miles and they gave me what I wanted in trade value. The dealership had a contemporary Christian radio station playing in the show room, which I thought was pretty cool. I dealt with the owner's son. He had called his dad to get approval on the trade in value of the minivan, but the guy wasn't answering his phone. While waiting for that call back, our smalltalk somehow turned into me recapping the last eight months. So, there I am in a used car dealership telling a complete stranger (who is trying to sell me a car) about my wife getting lung cancer, dying, and how I'm trying to take care of two six year old girls. I was quite sure Beccee was laughing her butt off in heaven knowing exactly how unlikely it is to find me talking to anyone, much less a used car salesman in Neenah, Wisconsin.

Anyway, Emma and I really like the car. It's small, relatively quick and sporty. Not as fast as the BMW 540i 6-speed, but way more fun than driving the living room, I mean, minivan. Millie has expressed her displeasure with the transaction. I don't think she was ready for mommy's car to go away. She's doing okay though and she is excited that instead of the built-in DVD player the van had, she is going to inherit mommy's iPod Nano that plays video.

Well since I got my obligatory Apple product mention in (someone's gotta get that stock going after the iPad announcement), I'll call it a night here.

Love and blessings,

Ron