I started out the day full of hope and trying desperately to be normal. It worked until about 10am, where I promptly had a total physical and mental breakdown. Hadley and Finn never stop. I just can't catch my breath let alone grieve. I literally stopped to look out the kitchen window and get lost in my thoughts for a minute and turn around to find Finn putting clothes in the toilet and Hadley shredding the flowers a friend had given me and throwing the petals freaking everywhere because she wanted to be a flower girl. I let out a long gutteral scream.

I feel alien and far away and alone. I want to be in Denver with my mom and sister. I want to be near everything that reminds me of him and not far away in a dreary city trying desperately to be normal when I really just want to scream at the top of my lungs that my dad died and I don't know what I'm supposed to do.

I continue to remind myself to breathe. My therapist appointment tonight cannot come soon enough and I daydream about her handing me a typed sheet of instructions of how to get over all consuming grief. Unfortunately such a thing does not exist. I will just have to walk through this one step at a time. A wise woman told me that this feels like someone scrubbing your skin with a wire brush. I couldn't agree more. I feel raw, vulnerable, and exposed.

My dad loved the poem "If" by Rudyard Kipling. He often spoke of wanting us to be able to "walk with kings--nor lose the common touch".

IF

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

--Rudyard Kipling