October 10.

Its coming. This entire month has been filled with glances at the calendar and internal count downs to different dates. A countdown until the last time I talked to her, a countdown until the day before it happened, wondering what she was doing, if she was happy, if she knew how much I loved her., a countdown to the day that it happened.  It's just too much sometimes, it really is. God knows that I have been trying to be positive, to be upbeat, to be thankful and grateful and all those cool things but to be honest...I just don't feel like it. I do have times where I feel like, Oh my gosh, I'm making it thru this with much more ease than I thought I would. But then just as soon as Im complimenting myself and having a little party in my head for doing so well with all of this...I go into a downward spiral and it can be something SO incredibly small that just pulls me right back down where I feel like Im right back in Nile and Sofias bedroom hearing Nico on the other end of the telephone telling me that she was gone.

 What the heck.

 She's really gone.

 The other day I was in my bedroom, and walked past the picture wall and Alyssa caught my eye, and like a giant something or other just fell on my chest and took my breath away and I thought...."wait...what?" And I remember telling myself, "Amy...she's really gone, gone like you aren't going to see her in the physical form anymore, ever again, never...ever....again." Over this past year I can not tell you how happy I am that I have always been such a picture taking freak, I have so many pictures of her to pour over, to soak up, sometimes I wish I could jump into the picture with her and be back at that moment when it was taken.

 If only we really lived our lives as if we really arent promised the next breath. Its easy, so so easy to say that that is how we should live, but actually doing that is a whole other story. I am always telling the kids to love one another and to not fight with each other or say mean things to one another because they never know what may happen before the next time you see that person, and sadly after this year we can really say that but even still, life and human nature just blurs all of that sometimes, and the fights still happen, the mean things are still said to one another, and people are hurt.

 Every time I think about her I get a song in my heart, it varies, sometimes its Bright Eyes, sometimes The Fray, Eminem, Mercy Me, My Chemical Romance, ABBA, the soundtrack from My Best Friends Wedding, oh gosh....I remember when the kids were younger, and we lived back in Wisconsin, we would blast music and dance around the living room, or the kitchen, wherever, but we would dance until we were sweating, we would belt out songs like Be a Man from Mulan....or Son of Man from Tarzan, or Alyssa and Corbin would make songs up in the car. I seriously have the coolest kids. Now your life really is as good as an ABBA song Lyss.

  "we will run and scream, you will dance with me, we'll fullfill our dreams and we'll be free...and sadness will be far away" I will love with urgency. 

 Mumford and Sons just gets it right. 

 One of my favorite ever pictures of Lyssa. With her Nico.

 

this is the last picture I took of my girl. At Dominics graduation from middle school.