DIJA'S SECOND ACT

Dear Lorenzo, As well you know (because I brag about it as much as is humanly possible) I have better than 20/20 vision. I've been tested more than once and each time the results are the same: in spite of my age, MS diagnosis, and years of reading in the dark, my eyesight is really, really good.  It is good enough to clearly make out the list of daily disciplines I keep taped to the mirror atop my bureau. And it is good enough to glean the disappointment reflected back at me each and every time I don't accomplish these tasks. The first four items on my list are the easiest of the day: "three things, vitamin, antidepressant, 40 minutes". In the almost four years since you've been gone, or rather, in the almost three years since I've been able to get off of the futon again, I've made a habit of starting my day by writing down three things for which I am grateful. After that, I eat a banana (your breakfast of choice every single day for the alm...

Dear Lorenzo, I'm starting to forget you. You've been gone almost four years now and it no longer feels like it happened "just yesterday". I no longer anticipate the sounds of you talking to Dwight on speaker phone to awaken me from a deep slumber. I no longer remember the order in which you ate your cereals, one right after the other, from the large blue plastic bowl I now use to dress my salads. I no longer remember your smell, it having been laundered out of your clothing long ago. I am starting to forget the details of our life. It doesn't hurt as much as I thought it would and maybe that's what sucks the most. The...ordinariness of my forgetting you. It's just another indication of time's passage. We have a dog now, Butters, and Amira has a cell phone and a social group to which she belongs and... We're moving on. I didn't want it to happen but... We're moving on. You're in our hearts but no longer a part of our dai...

Dear Lorenzo, It's 7:39 p.m., Saturday night and I'm spending the evening in typical, reclusive fashion: curled up under the comforters, watching One Day At A Time on Netflix while reading my latest, long-awaited treasure, "Untamed" by Glennon Doyle. Change is hard. Losing you was brutal, obviously, and for the longest time I survived on potato chips and ESPN, all the while judging my emotional progress with scientific measures such as, how many times had I managed to peel my ass off of the futon that day or, how many "your so brave"s did I receive in a particular week. My mere existence, the fact that I hadn't jumped into the grave with you at your burial or allowed my grief to swallow me whole and block out the rest of the world, was good enough for me in the immediate aftermath of your death. But now, almost four years later, I find myself with the unfamiliar feeling of wanting more. More than just Netflix and sour cream and onion Stax. More t...

Dear Lorenzo, There are still plenty of days when I don't want to get out of bed. Days when I want to keep my head under the covers, turn up the volume on my TV, and pretend that the rest of the world doesn't exist. Grief isn't linear. Some days I feel like I can conquer the world, others, the mere thought of bringing Amira to school in the mornings seems too daunting a task to conquer. But... Baby steps, right? I don't have to be perfect, I just have to keep trying to take baby steps in the right direction. So on days like today, days when I wish I could retreat back into my cocoon of comforters, calories and cable TV, I attempt instead to focus on the little things. The endorphin rush of a good workout. The sound of Amira's laughter trickling out of her bedroom after she's watched a particularly stupid Tik Tok video. The feel of my sweet dog, Butters, cuddling her way into my lap. It may not sound like much but today... It's enough.

Dear Lorenzo, It's 6:25 a.m. and if this were a typical weekday I'd be halfway through my workout by now instead of sitting in the kitchen, writing to you, but because my asthma is bothering me, I've decided to take it easy and skip the elliptical this morning. According to my favorite book/personal bible, The Slight Edge, sharing your goals with like-minded people can do wonders in our quest towards achieving them. I'm lucky to have found kindred spirits in my sister and our best friend Kay. Every Sunday, since the beginning of the New Year, we have a conference call to talk about our weekly progress towards achieving our personal goals. We talk about what went right, what didn't work out for us, and give each other advice along the way. My sisters have been a Godsend. Instead of the vague list of New Year's resolutions I've been making (and not accomplishing) since grammar school, I now have a list of concrete goals, broken down into weekly ste...

Dear Lorenzo, It's 7:23 Sunday morning and I'm alone in the kitchen, about to get started on my breakfast (since your daughter will be asleep for the next several hours) and Amira's crockpot chili for the week. Although I still have a cold I'm starting to feel a lot better and a hell of a lot less asthmatic than I've felt for the past several days. I have a busy day ahead. I'm going to ATTEMPT to workout today but failing that I still have to do laundry, both Amira and my hair, and clean up this not-too-dirty-but-a-little-too-cluttered-for-my-liking house. I also have to work on my budget for the week, which took an enormous hit since somehow, your daughter managed to break both her cell phone and her tablet within about 48 hours of each other. As frustrating as that is I couldn't really get mad at her. One, it isn't like she broke these items on purpose. (The way she's feenin' for Tik Tok and Snapchat can only be compared to Pookie in New ...

"You've been hanging on by a thread haven't you?" These words, spoken by a woman I'd never met before that day, could not have been more true. "Well" I sputtered, "My daughter was sick last week. She has pretty awful asthma and so I had to take the week off from work to care for her. And my mother-in-law, she lives upstairs, has bronchitis so I certainly couldn't ask her to help out. My little cousin, who lives upstairs too, has strep throat and she still has to go to school and work part time...hell, even my dog has been sneezing this week. Every single member of my household has been sick so I knew I'd catch something eventually but I couldn't take any more time off from work and..." I sounded like a damn fool even to my own ears. Yesterday, after feeling like shit for an entire week and a half, I finally called my doctor's office and made an appointment to come in after work to see the nurse practitioner, Nina. It w...