Anita,

Please feel free to write anytime you want, as long a text as you want. I understand the need to talk about your love, I need to do the same. I have stopped trying with a lot of people as I think that my grief just makes them uncomfortable and after just 8 months, I think that people feel I should be "getting over it". I know they all want me to "move on" and try and find some happiness. But...that isn't going to happen. I know that the sun will shine again, but never as bright. I don't want to die, like a lot of the people here, I want, and I need to be here for our kids. But, I just want him here with me. I always felt so incredibly safe with him. He was my big strong Harley riding protector, who was always so kind and so good with the babies. He truly was "larger than life". When he walked into a room, he was the one that everyone wanted to talk to and be with. The other day a friend of ours called and told me to get out my leathers and my helmet, he was coming to take me for a ride. When I said no thanks, he said that he knew how much I loved to ride. I had to tell him that no...I didn't just love to ride, I loved to ride with Jim. Again, I just felt so safe with him. We worked so closely with the police department, and many of his friends were officers, so he knew things that went on here that a lot of people didn't. At the end of his life he became so concerned about a home invasion that he had guns all over the house, and made me promise to put in an alarm system. I think he knew that he just didn't have the strength to protect me anymore, and it broke my heart. And seeing him cry and saying that he wasn't done, he had so much more to do, and he didn't want to leave me and the kids, tore my heart out.

He was also so worried about what his daughters and two of his sisters were going to put me through when he was gone. And he was right. They almost destroyed his service acting like idiots, and have now gone on to try and sue me because he left all of his estate to me. They just won't let it go, and it has become very ugly and all about the money. When I asked my kids what they wanted of their dads, they didn't want motorcycles, or cars, or money, our daughter wanted his sunglasses, because he always had them on, and our son said he didn't need anything, he had his memories. I am to the point that I just hate the others. I had asked him what he wanted me to do for the others when I got the life insurance, and his answer was, "treat them the way that they treat you when I am gone". So...the first thing that I did was to go in and write them out of my will. But they haven't once time asked for one thing to remember their dad by, only money. Of course, they were horrible to him during his life, so it doesn't surprise me, it just makes me very sad for him and his memory. But it makes it easy to hate them.

I still can't sleep in our bed, so I am still on the couch. But another friend of ours that lost her husband to the same kind of cancer about six months before I lost my Jim said that she feels closer to him in their bed, so maybe soon I will try it. I sleep wrapped in his robe to smell him, but even that is begging to fade. I am sending some of his favorite clothes to have teddy bears made from them for our granddaughters and the others that loved him. But....I can't hug his clothes forever, it just isn't doing it.

Will we never have anyone to hold us again. To say how much they love and need us? I don't want just "someone", I want him. I need him. Thankfully, he worked like a dog, and left me very comfortable. I probably wouldn't have to work again if I was careful, but I also want to keep our business going, for him, for his memory. Our employees loved him. All of the girls in the office went and got big tattoos of his truck and his call number in his honor. How many bosses were loved like that?

Now it's my turn to apologize for going on and on, b

but it is nice that someone understands. Please feel free to write anytime, I am here.

((hugs))