regrets

I don't have many regrets in life. I have always thought that everything happens for a reason and one thing causes others so making one change would change everything.

H and I were planning an anniversary trip. We had planned on taking the trip January 2010, but I got pregnant with M and she was too little for us to leave her. Then we planned on taking the trip January 2012, but I got pregnant again with G and she would have been too little to leave. We had planned on taking a trip January 2013. We would have been celebrating our 9th wedding anniversary. We were disagreeing about where to go. He wanted to go back to Paradise Island (where we went on our honeymoon) and stay at Atlantis. I wanted to go somewhere new, Jamaica, maybe. He was so excited about the trip. I didn't know it, but he had been talking to his boss about it. When we were in the hospital, I told him we would go to Atlantis.

I wish we had gotten to take that trip (I DO NOT regret having our girls, I just wish we could have taken the trip too).

I wish we had spent more time doing nothing together and less time working on the house.

I wish we had spent more time alone together.

I wish he had spent more time alone with the kids.

I wish we had spent more time together as a family.

Really, I just wish we had more time. I feel like we were so busy planning for our future and making sure our kids could go to college and we could build our house and, and, and that we didn't take advantage of the time we had together. We were sacrificing now to win the in the long run. Sometimes I wish we had just figured we would sacrifice later.

We figured we would have time later to just be together, without taking care of little kids or working on finishing the house or whatever. We thought we were going to get old together. We thought we would one day be planning a 50th wedding anniversary party, and now I don't even get to plan a 32nd birthday for my husband.

I hear couples say that they are doing such and such now for the future. It makes me sad that they have that future and we don't. Death is so final. I often find myself thinking "Oh, I need to tell him that. He would think that is so funny." It seems so strange that I won't get the chance. Really, it just seems impossible. I don't understand how he can be gone.

Then again, I wonder if he is here. He and I can't hold a 2 way conversation (although my kitchen lights kept flicking off and on today and I thought, "Ah! If only we knew Morse Code!")

At church on Sunday, M didn't want to stay in the nursery so I brought her into the service with me. All of a sudden, she got really excited and said "Mama! I see Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!" She was sitting on my lap and tried to go to him, but I held her. I didn't say anything and she didn't fight me. She was pointing past the preacher. He didn't looking anything like H. NOTHING. It was strange. Part of me wonders if she could see him.

Last night I was putting stuff away and TWICE I thought I saw him. It was in the mirror and just a flash of blue (like his Thunder shirts), but it felt like him.

Even now, I feel his presence. It makes me smile.

So, as far as regrets go, really I guess my only wish is that we had more time together. I wish he didn't die. I wish he was still here. I wish I had my family back.