Today, February 7th finally came after I have been dreading it for a few weeks now and feeling a bit of anxiety over it. Four years ago on this day I got that dreaded phone call from my mom that changed my family’s life forever. My sister was gone and I thought I was going to die from the pain. Here I am four years later, living my life, smiling a lot, laughing a lot and today on a day that I dreaded and thought I wouldn’t even be able to climb out of bed, I was able to say a prayer of thanks for a wonderful sister and friend, I was able to get up and function like any other day. Today is not different from any other day, really. I miss my Brandi every single day. Sometimes it makes me cry and sometimes the crying part doesn’t come.
When I got into my car this morning, I felt the tears welling up just a bit, so I changed radio stations and hit the 80′s station. ”Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” was playing. It made me laugh and sit there in awe for a moment. I had to question Brandi if she was messing with me. That is one of her all time favorite songs and mine and we loved, loved, loved listening to and dancing to it together. I’m talking about dancing like fools dancing.
I knew that today would be the best day to focus on my fundraising efforts for the Tour de Cure where I will be riding 62 miles this year. I’m not going to lie to you. The number sixty-two is very intimidating and I expressed to my friend, David who will be riding along with me that I’m frightened. He is too. There that made me feel better. I would love to raise $1200.00 this year. I”m doubling my mileage, so hoping to double my donations. If you are interested or know someone who would like to donate or ride on my team here is the information: http://main.diabetes.org/site/
Today, I made it to the gym to work my abs for twenty whole minutes, oh my, and I went to spin class with some encouragement from David. At one point as I felt like my legs were going to stop working, I looked over at him and asked, “whose idea was this?”. I needed to sweat. I needed to take care of me. I thank each of you that has personally reached out to me, today. It means so much to me.
I want to leave you all, today on a funny note. This is one of my favorite memories of myself and my sister, Brandi as kids. The year was 1991, I was getting ready to graduate high school, my sister was almost 6 years younger than me. I put on one of my mom’s records, yes, we listened to the record player back then. I was dancing and really getting into it and my sisters were looking at me like I was nuts. When I asked what was up, Brandi said, “why are you dancing like that?”. I responded that was how we danced when I was growing up and Brandi said, “man, the eighties were weird!”.
