First and foremost, I hope everyone had an amazing Easter!! Even though it was another holiday without Jeff, I had a good one. We hosted a small, family dinner of lamb and of course homemade macaroni-n-cheese! I guess that is one of the things that I had before and have it now so it’s “normal”.

Now, onto ‘things’. I have been having some heart concerns so I went to a cardiologist. After a 14 day monitor and an echocardiogram, it appears that I have some things going on that aren’t “normal” but not abnormal enough to be considered an issue. So once again, my normal is not the normal I expected but onward I go. Now, speaking of hearts…….there is this condition….Takotsubo cardiomyopathy (yeah, go ahead, say that three times fast!!) and most people have never heard of it. Well, they have not heard of it using the “official name” but in our English it translates to Broken Heart Syndrome which is more common to use. I first heard of it when I was young. When I was 9 years old, my Grandfather suddenly passed away. Prior to that, we would take the ride to my Grandparent’s house every Sunday for dinner. I loved these dinners. I looked forward to these dinners. I would watch my Grandmother run around like a typical Italian housewife of that time and watch my Grandfather sit by the television until dinner was served. I loved helping my Grandmother with the preparations and the dishes afterwards. I thought it was so cool that I was served coffee (actually, I was served cream with a splash of coffee) during dessert just like all the adults at the table. This was all until 12/23/1974 and then it wasn’t. We still went but it was never the same. I started to dread the trip and the time spent there. It was because not only did I lose my Grandfather but I lost my Grandmother too. The woman I knew was gone. I was physically looking at the person who was once my Grandmother but she was just a shell. Her heart was broken, her purpose was gone, she had nothing to live for, she had Broken Heart Syndrome and even at 9, I realized that within a couple months of losing my Grandfather, I was probably going to lose my Grandmother. But also, at the age of 9, I had no idea how to help this so I just continued to dread it and wait to lose her. Fortunately, years later, this woman found herself a new life. Just as my current life is not the one I had planned, hers was not what she would have chosen at all. My Grandfather was not only her love and her best friend, he WAS her life. Her identity did not exist without him. She got up in the morning and went to bed at night with one purpose…….my Grandfather. She didn’t drive until he was gone but she did it then because she had to do it. She started to go on trips with her sister-in-laws. She found a way to live and be happy. She remarried and even though she lost him a couple years after they married, doing this helped her and didn’t crush her the way losing my Grandfather did so many years prior. Ultimately, she lived to be three months short of 100 years old. She was my inspiration.

This all happened again when I was a junior in HS. My Great-Uncle/Godfather passed away suddenly and I watched my Aunt experience the same thing. Hindsight, hers was probably even worse (as if there is a grading system on this grief thing) because they were never able to have children so the form of support that my Grandmother had was not there for her. I acted as their child throughout my life but it’s not quite the same. She also was spared the ultimate outcome of Broken Heart Syndrome but just like my Grandmother, I just waited to lose her within months of losing my Uncle. She found a reason to live and it was often things that I was doing in life. She couldn’t wait to see me graduate from HS and then from college. She couldn’t wait for my wedding and would often tell people how much fun she had and that it was the last time she danced. She was so excited to hear about my job because she had been a school teacher in Philadelphia until she left her position to help my Uncle with his oil business. While she regretted that, she never complained. She received a copy of every observation I received and would call me immediately after reading the latest one to tell me how proud she was of me. She looked forward to the birth of my babies and then their visits to her home in Cape May. I started to feel pressured to give her things to look forward to and to keep her going. At one point, I remember telling my brother he needed to take one for the team and start giving Aunt Ret purpose. Well, we did a great job because this woman passed away just shy of 92.

I remember telling myself after watching these women struggle that when I got married I would NOT have my whole life revolve around that man. I would have my own interests. I would have a life inside and outside of our marriage. I knew that when I got married, I would love my husband with all my heart but I was going to protect myself from wanting to roll over and die when and if I lost him. So, fast forward, I meet Jeff. We do everything together and we get married. I mandated that we had interests that would give us time away. One of his was playing pool one night a week with a HS friend. He went away every winter on a ski trip with our crew but I would not go because I didn’t ski and it gave him time to enjoy something he loved. I was forced to be independent because he worked rotating shift work and we had three kids that all participated in high level sports. I had it all figured out. I even decided that when the time came, I would go before him so I wasn’t even going to have to worry about how to handle losing him….he was going to lose me and be fine. And with this comes the phrase “The best laid plans”. Yeah, I had plans until I didn’t. Jeff was taken from us and I was lost. I saw no light at the end of the tunnel. If I didn’t have kids, it would have been a no-brainer to just follow him to wherever he went on 1/14/2017. But……I did have kids and in addition to that, I had a husband who worked so hard for me through our 30 years together that I could never take the easy way out of this BS. I had a husband that I needed to make proud of me. I needed to be strong because he was always strong for me. I needed to go on because I couldn’t let him down!! And here I am, with those same goals……make him proud and be here for my kids and now the next generation, my bonus grandson Lucas and my arriving in June, 2nd grandson! It makes me sad that this generation will never physically know him but I have no doubt that he will be watching over them every second and the kids and I will speak of him as we always do so they will always know their Grandpop.