The POWER we give dates!

OK so one day I was watching Oprah (I'm truly missing that show) and she was interviewing families who had gone through tragedies. First she showed a previous interview with Nate Berkus (I think he's absolutely adorable. Especially after the episode of Oprah where he switched days with a stay at home mom. Watching him try to be Super Mom was so endearing to me. Any who...) and he was telling the story of his trip to Siri Lanka with his partner when the Tsunami hit. He said he had been in bed lifeless, and he only crawled out of bed to tell his experience for Oprah and then he went home and crawled back into bed. When they showed the footage he was WHOOPED! You could tell he was suffering. I guess it was the fact that his pain was genuine (NO ACTING!) that resonated with me.
And then they show this family. There was a mother and father, and two sons. Nate thought he was meeting with the family to help the youngest son Aaron come up with a business plan for his business. And you know how it is when you ask questions and then you find the real story. They told the story of how the family came to be. The parents marriage and then their first son was born. A few years later they were blessed with twins Aaron and Eric. They talked about the closeness of all the boys. And then one day they found out that Eric had a brain tumor. Eventually it became cancerous and Eric died at age 9. As you can imagine losing a child so young, the family was devastated. However Aaron's pain was even worse. And he grieved heavily. Well what I loved about this story is that when his parents took him to his medical doctor in desperate need of help for their son's grief. The doctor didn't put him on medication to "help" cope with day to day life. She reached into her purse gave Aaron some money and told him to go to the store and buy the things he needed to bake some cookies in honor of his brother. She wanted a list of the things he bought, etc. And that's where his business began. But I loved that the doctor gave him and outlet and helped him in the right way instead of pumping him with drugs and making things worse.
So as you can imagine Nate was not expecting to find this story when he went to the family's home. And the story touched him as it caused him to reflect on his own loss, etc. They talked about how the anniversaries were the hardest. And Nate talked to them about taking away the power in the dates. Not allow their grief to stop them from moving past the pain of the day Eric was born or the day that Eric died. (http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/Nate-Helps-a-Family-with-Grief/1)
I wish I still had this episode on DVR so that I could watch it and take some pointers for myself. Who knew that just within a few weeks of watching this show my whole world would be turned upside down. So here I am trying everything I can to forget that my beautiful flower's Anniversary (a.k.a. birthday) is coming up. What makes this difficult is that we talked even if it was only briefly every year on that day. Last year I tried to tough it out and go to work any ways. And wound up home on my couch BALLING my eyes out. At least last year I could call her hubby. But right now... I kind of refuse to call him (my stubbornness). Why?
Because why would I do that to him or myself? He is moving on with his life, I'm sure he has some feelings about it, but why would I call him about his past, which would only affect his present, and he's focused on his future! It really sucks to go through this alone though, and I guess maybe that's what is bugging me more than anything else right now. I feel an emotional break down coming on... I gotta go for a walk, get some fresh air, and try to clear my mind. NEVER in a million years would I have thought that all of this would affect me as deeply as it has. It seems like only yesterday that I sat down to have dinner with my baby when Kim called me. I was in a good mood actually. I can remember stifling my screams as I was trying to hear Kim out as she told me that my flower was in the hospital and it didn't look good. I lost my air! I FLEW to the hospital and saw her husband in the hallway with beet red eyes. He tried to explain as much as he could to me, but I remember him saying, "she's gonna cry when she sees you". I thought I was going to be strong when I walked in that room it was packed with a ton of concerned people. And as usual Jasmine sat on her bed being the life of the party. She was cracking jokes and making everyone relax. I excused my way through the crowd, I sat on her bed and we wrapped our arms around each and CRIED! We sat like that for a good two minutes before she pushed me away and said, "get off me, you're making me cry and getting your germs on me". We all laughed, she always did that, made light of a serious situation. It feels like that was just a few minutes again. Like I can still feel her tears on my neck. FORGET this! I forbid anyone else to get sick and die until we're at least in our sixties. I know that's young to die, but I think I could handle it a lot better at that point. Not when we're young vibrant and still have children in elementary, middle, or high school. I don't know how to take the power out of the date. I wish I could learn that.

I cant wait to HUG her again. I wanna tell her everything that she's missed. And I wanna kick it HARD! Laughing my behind off, because she's just like me... such a clown.