Listen to me blabber for about 10minutes about some updates in my life, since I have been pretty silent since Brittany was diagnosed in Dec 2019. Even if you do not know who I am (or even care 🙂 ), I hope that some of my thoughts, feelings, ideas can help you through your own pain for Brittany.
Photo taken during one of our trips to Florida. We saw lighthouses, but no Disney World.
I never quite got Brittany’s strong stance at not visiting Walt Disney World during our few visits to Florida. I am guessing some of you who are also big fans of Disneyland might understand her argument. I just had to sort of give up on not understanding and just sort of accept.
(possible cry alert). Our pond meant much more than just a pond. It still does today. 
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Brittany might have had anxiety about quite a few things, but if a person was breaking a rule, she was a bull in a China shop. It came to benefit me often, and I give a few examples where she had no issues talking to people because they were breaking the rules. I, of course, wasn’t feeling so confident and often just let her do her thing!
I normally write about airplanes and not about fluffy stuff. And when I do, I for sure do not share it. However, I am learning to share more of my emotions, realizing that it is not only therapeutic for me, but it can be helpful for others. I was inspired to write this during my recent flight home to Seattle (it is not technically a memorycast, b/c it is not a sound recording… but whatever):
As I look at the sunset from 35,000 feet, I know the science behind the beauty. How the sun’s light hits the water molecules of the clouds at the right angles causing the different shades of purple, blue, orange, and red. However, I know that science cannot fully explain the beauty of what I see and feel. There is more to it. Something that I cannot see. Something that I cannot define. But know to be true with every fiber of my soul.
This all feels so familiar to me, yet so distant. For the last year and five months I have struggled knowing what parts of Brittany left us and which still remain. Science might tell me that her ashes are all that is left, but with every fiber of my heart I know that is not true. She left so much beauty upon us and what we see and experience in the world cannot easily be defined by words. I often wonder why she has not visited me or made her presence known, but then I am presented with such beauty and can only feel her love. Her presence.
I am still working through my feelings and I am starting to care less about the line dividing science and an unknown reality. As I flew west, chasing the sunset across the sky, the beautiful colors faded. However the love and presence of the world and Brittany only grew. Was this her visiting me? In the past, I would say no, and today I am not sure. I feel that I need to keep my mind and heart open for what tomorrow might bring. I am starting to rely less on science to define what I feel and experience.
I used to worry that my changing view points were not based in reality, but only to better handle a loss in my life. Now I do not care. Feeling Brittany in the beauty of the world helps me feel her love, her presence and trying to explain things away with logic feels a part of my past now. I miss her dearly, but have such comfort knowing she is always with me, always looking out for me, and always adding to her long, long list of things that she is going to go over with me when we meet again (a loving list of things that would get me the “I can’t believe you did that David” glaring look).
That is all river rock under those wet leaves.
I am going to guess that you know my subject is total sarcasm. When weeding got overwhelming for me, I would break out my flame thrower and it was super shocking that she did not like when I did that. But she did her thing… she would always keep an eye on me, keep close, but never tell me not to use it. She would let me be me, but she would be her and make sure that I kept as safe as possible.
When I first met Brittany, I was sort of a handyman, but I for sure over sold myself to impress the girl. We were just friends at the time and she was moving out of her house needed help. I was quite confident that some of my ideas would work. Like in the photo, I am using bricks to hold down parts of the floor, so the glue would dry. That worked pretty well. But an idea I had for the bathroom floor did not.Â
Christmas was a big deal to Brittany. So much so that one of her biggest reasons she wanted to buy our house was it had a big window in the front to be able to show off the Christmas tree (that we would later buy and wasn’t cheap). I am not like a huge fan of Christmas, but not against it either. One thing I am not a huge fan of is decorating the tree. You have to be careful getting all the tiny ordainments out of their boxes and carefully place them on the tree so that they are evenly spaced. These are skills I am not good at, nor do I want to be good at. I soon found that Brittany would take advantage of me not wanting to do the ordainments (either consciously or subconsciously). But in the end (and something I didn’t mention in the memorycast), I think I did alright. If you look at the photo, not only can you see a Lego train going around the tree (which I negotiated that I could buy, if she bought the fancy tree), but I snuck under a bunch of other Legos and she let me keep them there.
We needed to move a full dining room set (table, hutch, six chairs where two of them had arms) across the country from Florida to our home in Washington. I wanted the trip to be a little adventure for us, so it was important that we used a regular truck so we could go explore and not be in a UHaul. She asked me when I was prepping if I thought everything could fit and I confidently say “yes,” but I really wasn’t sure. When I looked at the Chevy Silverado in my dad’s driveway and all the furniture that was supposed to not just fit in it, but also be safe for 3000+ miles, I was having second guesses. Being the “men” my dad and I felt we should do the packing, but we quickly realized that we were not the packing pro… Brittany was!
This is one of my favorite memories. I don’t want to ruin the story too much, but let’s just say we were camping up in the mountains with no cell phone reception and awoke to a creature making really weird noises while snorting. And it wasn’t until well after the fact that we were able to figure out what it was. Just good thing Brittany was there, because I wanted to open the camper door and check things out… that would have been a bad idea.
