Day 8 - Home

We made it back home to California. Had a few mishaps here and there, but all in all, it was a smooth ride home. It's both comforting and heart-wrenching to be back where everything is familiar. I missed my room, my shoes, my bathroom... but I miss Anderson now more than ever.

I tried sleeping in my old twin-sized bed in my room, but I couldn't. I'm now sitting in the king sized bed that we used to sleep on. When I first walked in to "our" room in my parents' house, I cried. I laid on the spot where he would have slept... I saw the little heating pad that we used to lay on. If he got to bed first, he would turn on the heating pad for me so it'd be warm by the time I got there. I cried really hard. Harder than I have for days. Maybe it's just because it's my first night back at home, but the void that he left in my heart seems overwhelming right now.

I know you feel pain too. You lost your friend, your cousin, your brother, your son. I feel like I'm feeling the loss of all of those you lost combined. He was my soul mate, my best friend, my lover, my shopping buddy, my roommate, my guinea pig, my coach, my teammate, my advisor, my encourager, my patient, my pupil, my teacher... my everything. You cry with me, but your life goes on. My life has crumbled all around me and I'm standing alone in the rubble.

Echoes, shadows, and faded images of him and of our life together seem to taunt me everywhere I look, everywhere I am. I almost felt like I was starting to adapt... almost thought I was feeling OK... and now I feel like I'm back to where I was a week ago, except I'm no longer in the hospital room holding his hand. What ever strength I had in Houston... I must have left it there because I'm starting from scratch now.

How do you even begin to pick up the broken remnants that remain after heartbreak and pain beyond words?

I don't know. I have no answers. But I think what I'm going to do is just make the most out of what I've been given and I've been given so so much. I read this a few days ago from Ecclesiastes 5:

Make the Most of What God Gives

^18-20 After looking at the way things are on this earth, here's what I've decided is the best way to live: Take care of yourself, have a good time, and make the most of whatever job you have for as long as God gives you life. And that's about it. That's the human lot. Yes, we should make the most of what God gives, both the bounty and the capacity to enjoy it, accepting what's given and delighting in the work. It's God's gift! God deals out joy in the present, the now. It's useless to brood over how long we might live.

Just keep swimming... - Dory of Finding Nemo.