You know those restaurants that give you sharpies to write on the walls? So, you are encouraged to leave your mark on the establishment. We have one of those places close by. For awhile it was a staple breakfast spot for our family.
It was a place that Tony loved. The food was over the top and the dishes have fun names like, Make a Grown Man Cry Burrito and Why the French Hate Us gravy covered croissant. The kids would write on the walls and wear paper crowns. It was a restaurant in our rotation.
In the early days after his death, I remember taking the kids there for a meal. We sat in a booth at the end of a run. Surprisingly, there was wall space that hadn’t been marked up. At the end of our meal, I drew a shamrock out of hearts and beneath it wrote U TV ’21.
It was just a small way for me to express my grief at the time. Leaving a mark on a place we used to come together as a family. A small ode to the person I missed sitting across from.
This weekend, one of the boys and I went to breakfast before we started on our busy day. For the first time in four years, we were seated in that same booth. Knowing it might be gone, I still turned around to look for the drawing. The walls could have been scrubbed, sanded, or simply faded and covered with something new. However, it wasn’t gone. The sharpie art was faded from the last time I saw it, but it was still there. Just like our grief. The sharp edges sometimes get worn down, but it’s still there all the same.
