I guess everything happens for a reason! I start the blog back up and BAM, this memory shows up on my Facebook. Almost six years to the day! I am not going to lie, reliving the past can hurt so much at times but at the same time, it brings so many great memories. We were supposed to make many more memories but that just wasn’t in the cards. Does that upset me? Yes, at times it not only upsets it but it totally pisses me off! We had this all figured out. We had years and years and years planned in advance but again, it just wasn’t in the cards. Sooooooo, here I am, picking up the pieces (even today) and carrying on the best I can. I have come a LONG way and I know that this journey is still not over. For those of you who have traveled this journey longer than I have…thank you for showing me that I can do this and I will survive. For those of you traveling this journey behind me, nothing would make me prouder than for you to see me as that person who lets you know that you can do this and you will survive!!!!

So here it goes…….for those of you that were around for the original blog……welcome back! For those of you who were not……welcome! I apologize to the veterans of the first site since some of this will be what you have already heard and already know.

I’ll try to keep the “information refresher” as brief as possible…..My name is Susan and throughout my 57 years, I have experienced many things that have made me who I am today. Some of these experiences have been amazing and some have been absolutely awful but that’s life, right?? Ups and Downs. Good and Bad. Anyway, here’s my most influential things to date……I was born and lived an amazing childhood. I started in S. Philly and then my parents did the “suburban sprawl” thing and wound up in S. Jersey. Great life, great friends, great times. I truly have a head full of great memories from this time in my life. Did bad things happen?? Of course! I lost my paternal grandfather when I was 9. Besides my Dad, he was by far my biggest cheerleader. When they say “the apple of his eye”, that would be this girl right here!!!! Later in HS, I lost my uncle/godfather. He and my aunt had never been able to have children so I played that part for them. I did the typical kid things for those times….I had neighborhood friends and played outside until the street lights came on. I played soccer for a year and then switched to cheerleading. I swam, and swam, and swam. I loved everything about the Jersey Shore (the one before MTV made people believe that characters were real people). Graduated HS and went on to college to pursue my goal of becoming a teacher. While in college, I met this guy. Well, he was more than just “this guy”, he was THE guy. I met Jeff when I was 21 and a few months later we were engaged on my 22nd birthday. He was everything that I dreamed about but was convinced just did not exist. We were married on 10/14/89 and pregnant by March! That scared us to death but everyone around us seemed to be really excited so we took a breath and decided to enjoy the ride. We were surrounded by loving family and great friends and while we struggled at times like any couple just starting out, we had a great life and it was only going to get better as time went on. We built a house in Delaware. We settled into our careers….yup, I became a teacher and Jeff worked his way up the chain for Coastal and then another one and another one and then Sunoco. Two more kids joined the crew and we became the poster children for life in the burbs. All was moving along as expected. Our kids all were doing well. We went to 100s of school functions, 100s of sporting events, lots of parties, and took some awesome family vacations. All three kids graduated from HS. We were talking about our retirement plans. Every so often, we would go out to dinner, just the two of us, to practice the empty nest thing. The next chapter was in sight until………….1/5/2017. It was a normal day. Jeff came off of his night shift and would jump right in bed since he had to go back that night. Normal conversation and off I went to work. Around noon, I got a text from Evan telling me Jeff was sick. I’m not going to go into details but we got Jeff to the hospital and two strokes later, he was in Lock In Syndrome and we had to either let him go or place him in a nursing home. We decided that he could not “live” like that so on 1/14/2017, we let him go. And here this blog begins. My journey through the most devastating event that I had encountered in my life. Basically, at 3:50 am I lost my life too. My past, my present, and my future crumbled in one last breath. We lost a husband, a father, a friend, an amazing co-worker, and the list goes on and on. That day, I lost me. So began my journey for OUR new normal………………..

As many of you know, I had a blog after Jeff passed away. I gave up the rights to the web address I had purchased for that site because it became rather costly. Looking back, I believe the blog was a good thing not only for me but for the followers as well so here we go again………..