Darling,
You are so brave. You are brave because you love people so much. When you love, you love with your whole heart and that scares me. I’m afraid you won’t have enough left over for me after you’ve given to everyone else. I selfishly want you all to myself.
I’ve learned I can’t stop you from giving to others the way you do. It is a package deal; either I get a Tammy overflowing with love- or I get nothing. I can’t shut down a part of you and expect things to go well with us. I just have to be grateful I am married to someone with such a passionate and generous heart because I also receive that incredible love.
If it wasn’t for you, we wouldn’t have a blog. It has been really hard. We fought a lot about the blog because we both had different ideas about what it would look like and what we wanted to share. It took a lot of courage to push through your fears: the fears I was not going to put my heart behind it, the fears that people wouldn’t like it and that they wouldn’t come back. It took an enormous amount for you to push through your sadness every time you thought about Natalie while writing.
I thought you wanted me to be a webmaster, CSS and HTML coder, WordPress expert, creative genius, digital artist, and perfect writer and editor. I heard, “I want our website to be awesome!” and I got scared and stubborn. I never believed I could make it awesome. I think of excellence and the little voice in my head whispers, “You can’t do it.”
I know we will make mistakes with this blog but I don’t want us to be afraid of failing. Our friends and family will help us build it with their honest feedback. They will have our backs. They’ve always done that.
Easter will be here in two days and it would be so easy to be full of self pity and isolate in your grief. Holidays without Natalie are hard for us. It hasn’t gotten easier even though it has been eight years. You choose to love me and others more than love yourself. You chose to have 10 friends over to our house, to give to them, and to cook for them. I can’t believe you are going to make three different cakes for us. I thought one was enough and two was a lot. Three!
This morning, you said you loved our site. You said this is what you wanted and that was music to my ears. The only opinion that I care about is yours. It means everything that you are happy with it.
-g
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Dearest Grant,
You are so brave. I know that you are brave because you searched the garage not once but twice this week for our Easter stuff. Besides the Easter bin that contains Natalie’s first Easter basket, there are so many memories of past holidays we’ve had together: Natalie’s Christmas ornaments, her sewing fabrics that she handpicked when we took her to Britex in the City, the orange and black striped broom she used for her witch’s costume, and all the art she created during her hospital stays. Yet you did it anyways because you wanted the plastic eggs and baskets for Sean to do his Easter egg hunt in our backyard. You wanted to give Sean and me a good Easter.
You told me afterwards what an agonizing task that was. I’ve done it before and it is so painful. I wish I had known so I could’ve saved you from such torture. I would’ve told you to just go and get new plastic eggs and plastic baskets. They are not that expensive compared to the emotional cost of searching in our garage.
You are brave because you have given your heart to this blog the past 6 weeks. You’ve expressed to me how hard it has been losing your job and feeling rejected. It has made you doubt yourself and your abilities. I have a hard time believing that your ability to perform was the reason you lost your job. Your intelligence astonishes me. It always has since the day I met you. Most people, including me, wouldn’t even know how to begin if asked to put together a blog. It would have taken me months to figure it out.
If your former job only knew what you have gone through with losing a child, they would’ve seen what a treasure they had under their nose. It would have been so easy for you to use the many sick hours you have banked up as “mental health” days -but you didn’t. You never wanted to use your suffering as an excuse to not be a good employee. You didn’t want people to treat you differently so you pushed through and went to work no matter how you were feeling.
It would be so easy for you to be selfish and unmotivated in your depression about your job situation. Yet, you chose to not lose the good things about yourself and let that happen. You chose to love me, spend time with your friends, and spend quality time with Sean.
You pushed through to get this blog launched despite the constant sorrow that haunted you and the self-doubts that attacked you. What you’ve done in the last six weeks reminds me of how incredibly brave you were in the hospital with Natalie, how incredibly brave you’ve been over the last 8 years after Natalie died, and how incredibly brave you still are now.
I want you to know that I don’t expect you to do this blog alone. I expect to walk with you as I have done through every storm life has thrown at us. I expect to walk with you through this and more until my last breath.
You are my best friend. Yes, there will be many more fights. We will fight a lot through this process. That’s destined to happen when you put two Cal grads together who are both opinionated and stubborn. But I find that the more terrible the fight is, the closer we are after we get all that junk out of our hearts.
I expect to laugh together, cry together and grow together. I love you.
-Tammy
Sniff… so many memories come back whenever I read your posts. But reading your posts have made me laugh, too. I love the look of your blog, so good job, Grant! You two are good together– great partners in life. I often thought that you both were incredibly strong trying to get through your daily routines when Natalie was in the hospital and especially when she was at home. It was exhausting both physically and emotionally. Your dad and I were thankful that we could help whenever we could because I don’t know how you could keep up your daily routine without some relief. It was trying for us, too, and we were only there for a week or two at a time. You’ve supported each other through good times and the very worst of times. You’ve come through the lowest point of your lives and have persevered and found happiness, contentment, and hope… true, loving partners for life. We’re proud of you and admire you. Much love!
I read your comments out loud and you made us both cry. We love you. Thank you.
Fantastic, Tammy and Grant! It is like a “professional -fill-in the blanks” program. The background (wet mark) of koi in the background … on these pages are subtle and, initially, just viewed as coloring in the background. But as I started to think about my initial entry–I noticed the koi hiding behind the red blog.
You both amaze me and I am proud to say that I know these authors. I, too, was angry to hear that the initial findings of Natalie’s Cancer was only identified because of a loving and caring Mom, who was not in a hurry to get out of the doctor’s office when they failed to do a complete lab work that was expected by a Mom.
…I immediately felt sad that I had commented to Natalie that SHE had to continue to carry her medium sized stuffed animal because she said that she wanted to bring it with her during one of the outings that Tammy and Grant had planned for us-before we found out that she had cancer.
I am amazed at the sheer will power that both Tammy and Grant have in everything that they do. Mom and I would drive up to Pleasant Hill to help for a mere week or more. But despite a long day at the hospital and work for Tammy and Grant, one of them would then drive both of us back home after taking our turn at the hospital. Yes, the traffic was irritating due to the people going to or from work, too.
Grant’s initial guidance to us in response in our question: what do you want us to do today? (he’s really saying-do you want the long list or short list. Tammy and Grant have so many things going through their minds about Natalie, the hospital, the doctors, the nurses, their work.) He said don’t ask us that. It creates more confusion as it now requires them to stop and to begin to reorganize their thoughts and either of them having to stop to see where they are at and all the things that they have going through their lists of things. Neither are going to be upset if Mom and I don’t do everything that they would like us to do. If we see something that needs to be done that fits into “our” schedule then that is fine.
It is amazing what the four or them have accomplished on a daily basis. And, yes, Sean had to grow up very quickly in a short period of time. I remember one of the things that he commented on after numerous trips back and forth to visit and to make Natalie’s day better. Someone asked what he would like to do.
Sean said, well, you know how Natalie sits in bed and gets to eat in bed, too. I would like to eat in bed,too.
Tammy and Grant and Sean are special people who want to share their story. I am glad that they made us more than a part of their lives.
Sorry for joining this blog at such a late date. But I am enjoying your inputs.
Thanks, dad. I needed that. Not having a great morning.