Hi sweetie,
We had a lot of wind and rain today. You know how we lose power when a drop of rain falls, so our power has been out since 12:30pm. It’s now 7:59pm and the power has turned on and off five times in the last half hour. They fooled me on this last one though, because I thought it was going to stay on.
Since there was no power, the commissary was closed, and the PX was closed, I used it as an excuse to take the kids to one of our “final time” spots. We went to Teddy’s in Haleiwa. Honestly, I don’t know if I’d love it as much as I do if that one wasn’t setup the way it is. The ambiance is just so wonderful.
I was actually really upset leaving there tonight. It’s not that we won’t be able to go back to Teddy’s, that’s just something to miss. I felt like I was leaving another piece of you behind when we left. The memories of you grabbing a book to wait for our food or even you begging for us to buy you the Aloha Tower will be gone. I will obviously still have the memories, but it felt like so much more of a loss leaving there. There was a little chick in there and all I wanted to do was “drop a fry”, but she was gone when our food came. Plus, I feel like it is frowned upon to feed the chickens walking through the restaurant.
With no electricity today, I went back into your room and continued sorting all your legos by color. Just like you, once the boys would take their things apart they would just throw the legos they used into the “community bin” instead of putting them back with the correct colors. I hadn’t even completely separated them all while you were still here. That project took around twenty hours of my life and I just couldn’t finish it. So since I lost you, the ones that were still in the “community bin” multiplied by around ten.
It’s difficult to sit in your bedroom in silence. When we moved here, your legos were just all in one bin. You started to get more organized with your builds and wanted certain color schemes for them. Watching you sit there and look through thousands of legos was painful. To try and make your life easier, you always just dumped the entire bin onto the floor. Doing that became an issue when you didn’t want to spend the time putting them all back in and your floor was covered with lego obstacles. So I thought the best thing to do for you was to separate them by color, not actually realizing how many legos you had. I would just sit in there with you and sort while you built whatever creation you were working on at the time. When I was in the myself, I could listen to my music, but when you were in there with me we listened to yours. The one day I think we listened to the Shiny song from Moana for a half hour straight.
Ellie’s one therapist called me while I was in there sorting and crying. I pulled it together on the call until she asked me how I was personally doing. I just lost it on the phone and apologized for the bad day.
Generally speaking, I don’t think I’m “okay” anymore. I think I’m starting to see all of it taking a toll. I picked Ellie up today from school and she just says, “wow, look at all your gray hair”. I walked her to school that morning, it’s not like I looked different. I just attribute that to the stress of the past fifteen months, not sleeping, and life slowly breaking me down.
Tomorrow I’m taking your siblings to the Surf for the Soul event. I’m really hoping at least one of them gets in the water with the surfers. They would each have their own professional surfer to go with. I know how amazing this chance is and told them even if they maybe just sit on the board and go out for a little with them, it’d be awesome.
Please watch over us. I love you more than anything in the world, sweetie. Goodnight and sweet dreams.