It’s always a little tough to know how to handle the delicate days after someone is gone. The birthdays. The milestones. The holidays. The significant event days. The anniversaries. And everyone is so different in how they want those delicate days handled. Some people don’t want to think about it because the reminder is painful. Others don’t want to feel like the world has gone on spinning and completely forgotten the calendar of events that made up the moments that mattered in the life of the one they lost.Yesterday, February 25th, would have been Mitzi and Gary’s 31st anniversary. I had been helping Mitzi remember her anniversary for 3 years. I thought about it all day today because last year, on their 30th anniversary, the 3 of us spent an interesting time together at the hospital while Mitzi was being checked over for a neurological event that we never could quite explain other than continued decline.I remember sitting there with her sister and the two of them in the ER room as Mitzi was put through multiple neurological exams and tests thinking how wrong it was to have to spend your 30th anniversary this way. Wasn’t it tough enough that Gary’s days were spent revolving around helping his 58-years-young wife do everything? And, conversely, wasn’t it tough enough that Mitzi, at only 58, needed help with all of those things? Did they really have to spend the actual date at the hospital, too, looking at the computer screen that showed the side-by-side comparison of Mitzi’s 2014 brain scan with the one they had just done. “You can see these dark areas here,” the on-call Neurologist pointed out to us on the screen, “where the brain is basically receding.” The universe seemed to deal a pretty low blow that day last year…it would have been so much nicer if the commemoration of 3 decades of togetherness had just included an early dinner at one of their favorite restaurants and an ice cream bar on the balcony overlooking the ocean as the sun set.We joked that at least they had room service at the fancy suite where they would be booked for the night.Most people, when they take their wedding vows, recite some semblance of “For better or for worse, in sickness and in health, ‘til death do us part.” When you’re young and in love and seem to have the whole world waiting for you, those words tend to roll off the tongue because they are not nearly as heavy as they become over the years, especially when the weight of unexpected, unwelcome realities make their way into the union.I remember driving home from the hospital that night after leaving Mitzi and Gary there to spend their 30th anniversary in the beautiful suite at one of the country’s most prestigious medical facilities. I was reminded, by rewinding the events of the day, how important those vows truly are.This year, on the day that marked what would have been their 31st anniversary, I started typing a text out to Gary 3 different times. But I never could seem to make the appropriate words come out on the screen. You never want to make anything harder on someone than it already might be, you know? In the evening, after stalling all day, I finally convinced myself that a simple, “Just thinking of you…” was OK to send. And he responded in a way that reassured me he appreciated I had remembered…
