July is a huge month for birthdays for our family. Baby Sis’s is the seventh, my husbands is the 22nd, and mine is the 31st. We also have multiple aunts, nieces, and cousins on my husbands side of the family that falls all over July dates. I don’t think there are many days that there isn’t a birthday going on somewhere in the country for our family.

But this year is different for our family. Big Bubby is gone and these are just another set of “firsts” for us to manage our way through. I waited to post this until my birthday since I am the last, have to be since its the last day of the month. 🙂

The books that I have mentioned in past posts all say the second year is worse than the first. I don’t know how that can be. The past eight months have felt like living through the worst nightmare you could imagine and not being able to wake up from it. I long to be able to go out to dinner for our birthdays with Big Bubby in tow but know that there will never be another dinner celebration with him at the table.

Baby Sis and her friend are here in New Orleans to spend the weekend this weekend for our birthday’s. So I have been busy keeping them busy around town doing tourist attractions since her friend has never been here. That has been good to keep my mind off of not having a call or text from Big Bubby today harassing me about my age and how old I am getting.

As we travel this road called grief, it’s hard to see the other side and know that it will get easier. No one knows when they will come out the other side. For some, I have read it was several years. I feel as though I never will come out the other side. It is days like today that I try to remember the great times we had with Big Bubby. His laughter, his smell. I try to focus on those so that I don’t spiral out of control into the abyss of depression.

Don’t miss out on birthday’s or any chance to spend with the people that you love. As I state in almost all my posts, tomorrow is not a given. Be patient with each other, don’t go to bed mad, your loved ones can be gone in an instant without you being able to say good-bye. Mine was.