20 Years

Last Monday Aaron and I should've been celebrating our 20th wedding anniversary together. We should've been planning some extravagant weekend away, or a special holiday...just something together would've been nice. Even if it was just going out for tea and to a movie. 

Instead I felt weird all day as I kept saying 'today would've been our 20th wedding anniversary'.  It still was our 20th wedding anniversary, but it was just a strange day as it wasn't really a day I felt I should be celebrating, as he isn't here.   It still was  our 20th wedding anniversary, but we only had 16 years together as husband and wife on earth, and 17 years together. 

Now that Facebook has the 'on this day' feature I have a lot of memories coming up every day. It's actually hard to see some of the memories - especially those from four years ago, because it was just after Noah passed away.  Even though I know what happened, reading our memories from that time makes me anxious as I'm anticipating Aaron's death in January.

On our anniversary this came up on Facebook.  It made me smile.

It was probably good that the day fell on a work day, as it meant I was at school and was busy.  The kids that I teach are beautiful and always cheer me up, so it was nice to be with them all day.  After work we went to visit Aaron's Dad for his birthday, and then went out for tea, to our usual favourite place.

Jalen was very excited about the colouring in ;)

 It was nice to run into some friends who were also having tea there, and I told them we were there because it was our anniversary...and then joked about how great it is to be able to celebrate my 20th wedding anniversary of my dead husband.  They all laughed and said that only I can get away with saying something like that, and I reminded them that you either laugh or you cry.  I actually didn't cry all day, and the day turned out to be okay. 

I did suggest to the boys that we go and get some dessert and sit and eat it at the cemetery and Harri cracked me up when he said 'I can't be bothered'.  I laughed and said 'don't worry about your Dad who died' and we all had a laugh together. The weather has cooled right down this week, so it probably wasn't a nice night to sit at the cemetery anyway. 

 When we got home there was a lovely surprise waiting for us from our friend Alison.

 It definitely was not the way I ever imagined our 20th wedding anniversary to be.  We had thrown around the idea of Aaron being on long service leave from work and going on a cruise, but instead it was a night off cooking and a steak with my three boys, and Pepsi when we got home. 

I miss my crazy, funny man so much.  He drove me crazy at times with his silly sense of humour, but I'm so grateful that I can see bits of Aaron in all the boys. I keep telling them that's not always a good thing though :)  I have been feeling him around a lot lately, but I just wish he were really here.  I love and miss him so much.