There are stages to grieving. I am past the denial and anger stage, but no where near the acceptance point. Last week when I pulled up to my mom's house there was a "for sale" sign in my dad's semi truck. My heart sank. I knew it was for sale, but to actually see the sign just caught me off guard. My dad was an independent truck driver-he owned his semi truck and was basically a self-employed contractor. Even though his cancer was taking a toll on him physically, he did not want to stop driving. He spent his last seconds alive in his semi truck. I've been wanting to go inside of my dad's truck. I wanted to see it before it was cleaned out. I wanted to see his bag, his papers, his cup, and even his blood. It sounds weird, but my dad was alone when he died and if I could see his truck in the state that it was before it was cleaned, then maybe I could find some sense of closure. I could in some strange way "be there?" I guess? I did get a chance to go inside, but there wasn't any traces of him. Lil Marcus came outside with me and well he wanted to sit in the truck too.
My Dad and Son in 2008
My Son 2010
On the picture right above, I kept trying to get Marcus' attention, but he kept looking up. I'm just going to put this out there, but on the 2010 pictures of my son there is a white glowing spot that shows up in these pictures. The white glow is on his knee in the picture of him sitting outside of the truck and on the pictures of my son inside the truck its between him and the steering wheel. Its not a glare from the sun because we were shaded under the tree. Maybe its a speck on my camera lens or maybe its something more.
So much has happened since my last post. I honestly have not had too much motivation lately and even though I've had so much to say since August, I just flat out didn't. I'm trying to set a new schedule for myself and blogging is going on it, so hopefully I will stick to it.
I bought Marcus some play dough (please contain the "ooOOoo's and Aahhh's). I've always wanted to buy him some, but now I can finally trust him not to eat it...I think.
On September 3rd-6th My mom and little brother came to Jacksonville to visit.
When they arrived and was walking toward my apartment building, my son told my mom, "Wait, we have to wait for Gardner." My son calls my dad Gardner. My mom wants my son to call her Mrs Gardner, but no, he calls her grandma. My mom told my son that my dad was not with them. My dad never got a chance to visit us in Jacksonville. My brother and mom had a really great time and we were so glad that they came to visit. The very next weekend my husband's mom and oldest brother came to visit.
On September 23rd we went to The Landing to have lunch and we noticed very expensive tour buses next door at the Times Union Center. Later that night at 8:30pm I thought about what we saw and decided to google the Times Union Center to see who was there and found out that it was DRAKE!! By 9:00pm I was there watching him live. He put on a really great show. Baby from Cash Money showed up and did a verse and talked about Lil Wayne. Here is a video of a funny moment from the show.
After we got done with family visits our next focus was our one week vacation in Pensacola in celebration of our 3 year wedding anniversary. We got married on Pensacola beach on September 29, 2007
This year we decided to come home and stay on the beach. Things did not go as planned, but then again, they never do. First of all I wasn't even suppose to see Lil Marcus on September 29, 2010, but as you can see from our balcony breakfast, he didn't miss a thing.
Afternoon drinks with fun in the sun.....
he didn't miss that either. Lil Marcus had the most fun out of everyone during our week vacation.
My friend Mary's party was the final closer of my week in Pensacola. She had a birthday party planned on October 2nd at my usual beach hang out-The Portofino. Marcus was back in town on Saturday (he left to go back to Jacksonville on Thursday for a Young Jeezy concert and he took his friend and middle brother with him) and planned to make things up to me for having such a sucky week and sucky anniversary. We went to Five Sister's for a late lunch, but Lil Marcus was right there with us. Don't get me wrong I love spending time with my son, but my husband and I never get to go and do things alone, we always have to take him. We finally dropped Lil Marcus off with my mother-in-law and headed to hotel Sole Inn downtown, but of course they were fully booked. We proceeded to Mary's party to drop off alcohol and then went to find a room on the beach. Only to find that everywhere was completely booked, so we decided to worry about where we were going to stay after the party. Mary had a great turn out, but unfortunately she was placed right above a resident that was being ridiculously unreasonable and complained about everything. It got to a point where I called down to the front office and security to complain about him. I could understand if we were being loud and acting a complete fool, but there wasn't anything loud going on....except for when someone kind of almost got murdered.
Isn't her cake adorable?! Everything you see is edible.
Oh yeah, I kind of skimmed over the murdered part huh? So we are upstairs and I noticed that I haven't seen my husband in awhile. I went downstairs to find him in the truck sick...so much for our plans. Nope, no sympathy here, that's what alcohol does...
And in his lap, that he used to wipe his vomit lips was my fairly new shirt. I told him to hold tight, that I would go upstairs and let Mary know that I was leaving. I broke the news to Mary and told her that I would take a few pictures before I left, but little did I know, I would not be leaving as soon as I thought.
Apparently there was a very intense game of dominoes going on. So intense that I actually to a picture of the players-something caught my ear between the two so I took their picture.
I will continue this story by calling them gray shirt and white shirt. I am standing by the counter in the picture below, getting my things together when I hear a commotion behind me. I turn and find gray shirt has slammed white shirt against the door and is holding white shirt by his throat with a butcher knife in his opposite hand.
The gift bag in the picture is blocking the knife and notice how far I moved from the counter. The confrontation went on for a while. Gray shirt had the knife to white shirt's face threatening to kill him. He even kept jabbing it towards his face as he held him by his throat. I will never forget the fear in white shirt's eyes and the helplessness I felt, because I could not help him. The guy in the red shirt was trying to diffuse the situation and get the knife, but gray shirt would not budge. The woman in the kitchen tried to get the knife, but he turned around and swung the knife at her. Eventually gray shirt let white shirt go, only to have white shirt stupidly go after gray shirt gripping a Grey Goose bottle. I know white shirt was embarrassed, but sometimes you can't let your pride guide you into dumb situations. I'm not sure exactly what happened after gray and white shirt left, but we did hear screams outside and found the knife and the Grey Goose bottle shattered in the parking lot. Did I mention that the dispute was over $20?
The party continued and despite all of the interruptions Mary swears she had a good time.
I finally made it down to Marcus, who had successfully filled his cup up with vomit. He missed all the action. We never found a room and ended up sleeping at my mother-in-law's house. We made it back to Jacksonville Sunday night. Hopefully my next trip to Pensacola in 2 weeks will go much better.
