Sometimes, okay, let’s be honest, more often than sometimes, it feels like the best part of my life is over. She is gone. She is gone. And, she is gone. However, at the same time It feels like this is the best part of my life because I get to raise a fantastic daughter. Even though I know that it would be so, so much better if Natasha were still here, there is something magical about this time in my life. I just need to figure out how to work from home, and then things will be easier. Being diagnosed as being visually impaired doesn’t have to be a huge hindrance like losing my wife. But at the same time, come on! How many challenges do I have to face back to back!
For years now, I have thought about this time as the worst time of my life, but because I get to watch Anisha grow up, maybe this has actually been the best part of my life! Okay, okay, let’s calm down. It can’t be the best time without Natasha…yet it can still be pretty amazing. I just hate that I feel as though I missed out on my daughter’s baby years because I was so freaked out about her mother dying. I never want to go through that kind of pain again, and I mean never, but it has been significant time for my daughter.
I hate the void that cancer has left in our lives. I hate that cancer had to make all of us suffer so much!
The Vancouver Jazz Festival is coming which was always one my wife’s favourite events. Annually, we would spend days looking at the free jazz festival program guide trying to figure out which paid and free shows that we could not miss. This month The Roots are coming which is one of Natasha’s favourite bands. How excited she would be to see them on the schedule.
I love that I was able to get my wife into sports which makes this week extra hard. It’s hard enough that it’s my daughter’s half birthday, but my wife is missing some of the most important basketball games in Canadian history. Knowing her, should would have found cheap package to fly us to either Toronto or Oakland.
For me, and I know for my wife, Canada winning the championship would only be second to a black man becoming the president of the United States. Even though we are not black, nor American, as people of colour many of us ‘immigrant’ families in Canada were moved by watching President Obama rise above all the challenges that black people face. In fact, my wife called from Mumbai while visiting family so that we could watch the results together, regardless of the time zone difference. We ended up talking about that moment for years, and if she were still here, we…
I still find two parent families annoying sometimes. I know it’s really about me and not them, but sometimes I get so sick of clusters of parent huddled together around their cellphones while going on and on about how busy they are all the time. “We haven’t had a date night forever!” I would love to have such a ‘horrible’ problem.
Yesterday, my daughter uttered the sentence that I suspected she would say some day. After spending time with a friend’s nanny, my daughters said with excitement, “I wish Vanessa was my mommy!” I hate that she has to grow up without a mother—no child deserves to go through life this way.