I’m feeling drained today. I’m feeling fragile. I didn’t sleep well. I’m still struggling with fears of other people dying, or of just how fleeting life is. I’m struggling with the idea of my own short life and how I sometimes wonder if I will feel I have lived it fully by the end. The cold weather here is really hanging on for dear life too, which is not helping anything.

I guess it’s easy to think about all these things right now… it’s just a few days away from Drew’s birthday. It has been 7 whole years now since I got to celebrate this day with him here. For some reason, that number feels a lot harder than some of the previous years…

He would have been 35. I can’t help but imagine where he would be by now. He was just starting his career as a pilot when he died. By now, he would have had years of experience and been moving up in ranks. He may have been flying in Alaska, or the Gulf, or anywhere else around the country. We would have moved every few years likely to somewhere new. I guess it’s just on my mind lately… what he would have been like at 35. What our world would have been like at what would have been 10 years together this year. We only got 3. Thinking that we could have had ten years by now and didn’t get to have that is so painful. No way around it.

So, today is just a hard day… even though it isn’t his birthday for a few more days. It’s still hard, because sometimes it’s hard for no reason at all. Sometimes it’s hard a week before a milestone date. Or a week after. Or, just on a random Sunday too.