2 months ago

I wasn't sure where to begin, our friend Toni was kind enough to remind me of the lapse from my previous entry. It still seems surreal to me even after 2 months. I was downstairs this morning intending to write when Lilly called me to come upstairs. She wanted to show me something. I found her in tears in the bathroom, she wanted me to follow her and listen to something. The kids used to use her cell phone to call the house phone and leave her messages and I guess Lilly played one of Samantha's calls. When she replayed it for me it was like hearing a ghost from the past, Samantha was leaving a message to Lilly that she loved her. I was thinking of a message that she had left on my cell phone and how stupid I was to not have saved it at the time. I can still remember the message, she was with Megan and she was trying to get Megan to say "uncle Sam". Lilly and I held each other and cried for a very long time.

A friend spoke to me the other day about an article he read about the new General Manager of Lexus USA. He was talking about his family and when counting his children, he said he had one son and two angels in heaven. I was totally awed by this statement. I had begun to think of Samantha's death as a loss of one person from our family but I was wrong to think that way. We will always be a family of four. Samantha was our daughter and Jonathan's sister, that can't ever be taken away from us. It would be a lot less awkward to tell someone that we have a son and one angel in heaven than saying that we have only one child. I will have to send a thank you note to Mr. So and So from Lexus USA, he's been an inspiration.

I meant to write a separate post on May 31st, there was excellent news. Yantacaw school jumped from 3rd place to 1st place in the Library Makeover contest on the last day of competition. First place school gets $45,000 to make over the school library, thanks to the folks at Pfizer and Reading Is Fundamental. It was an extraordinary effort by the school PTO and all the moms and dads who got together as a community to make this happen. Yesterday the news got even better as the standings were updated again and our lead grew by almost a thousand points. The official results won't be posted or announced until September of this year but I think things are looking pretty good for the kids at Yantacaw Elementary School in Nutley, NJ. It's amazing what can get accomplished once people get together for the common good, I guess the saying is true "where there is a will, there is a way". It would be nice if the school dedicated the remodeling of their library in Samantha's memory but I wouldn't be shocked if they didn't. I think Samantha would be happy just to see all the new books that would be made available to the students for years to come. In my heart, that would be her lasting legacy.

I recently started to learn the art of origami and I think I will take it on as a hobby. It's totally confusing at first but once you get the basic folds in order, the rest is pretty easy. So far I've been able to make Pikachu(pokemon), a butterfly, a heart with wings, a sitting dog and a goldfish. The harder ones that I want to try to do are the ballerina and a dragon. Samantha loved to dance and she was born in the year of the Golden Dragon(it was supposed to have been an especially lucky year to have children). I asked Lilly to hang the origami I made on the two memorial trees, hopefully no one will take them but I guess if a kid takes pleasure from one of the origami, it's ok for him/her to take it. I can always make more. I just hope the parks people don't consider it clutter and remove them from the trees. At the dedication ceremony, the parks commissioner asked that the trees not be treated like cemetery sites. Because Samantha's remains are down in Maryland, the trees are the closest that our friends and us have to a place to visit and remember her. By putting up the Origami, I thought that it would evoke happy memories and put smiles on everyone.

I drove into the city today, Lilly made me go see the doctor. I've been continuously getting sick all year and it seemed like as soon as I get over a cold I would get sick again. The doctor took some blood and gave me a checkup. He said I have a bad post nasal drip due to a sinus infection. My body just wasn't able to fight off the infection by itself so I am now on antibiotics. The good news is that my hyper thyroids seem to have relapsed although I can't celebrate until the blood works come back. I forget that I am now into my middle ages and the body is not what it used to be. The body is starting to break down and I am going to have to be more conscious about what I eat and the exercises I should be doing.