This is the day I have been dreading.  I saw it on the calendar coming up and cringed. A year ago today, January 22, 2009, my boyfriend of 3+ years, Harry passed away.   All day today, I’ve been reliving the events of January 22, 2009 in my head.  Fighting with him in the morning and leaving mad.  Not saying goodbye, doing lmL or saying “I love you” to him before I left.  Calling him over and over again all day to say I was sorry and wondering why he wasn’t picking up.  Getting the call from his brother.  I had never heard him cry before. He wouldn’t tell me.  He hung up.  Calling his Mom. Collapsing on the floor in my office at work when she told me.  Being driven home by a co-worker and calling Harry’s closest friends and having to break the news to them.  Driving up to our house to see police cars and a medical examiner’s truck in front.  Seeing Emily for the first time. Watching them roll the empty body bag in and then watching them roll it out, knowing the love of my life was in it.  Mitzie, our cat, getting out and disappearing for hours. Although it is all a blur, everything for the first week or two afterwards was, I remember it all. And I probably always will.  As if it was yesterday.

There are a lot of “shoulda woulda coulda’s” that I think of looking back on everything. And I guess that it’s all part of the grieving process. But the only thing I wish I could have changed was not telling Harry I loved him before I left.  I didn’t kiss him or hug him, I just left, mad about something.  I don’t even remember what it was, it was that insignificant.  I never thought I would never get a chance to see him again.   My life was changed in a second.  Hug your loved ones tonight.  Be happy that you have them. Life is short and you never know what could happen…you may never have another chance.

I went to a new doctor yesterday.  They gave me all the typical forms to fill out. Everything was fine until I got to the “Emergency Contact” section.  It was at that point, that I realized, I no longer have an emergency contact.  Until 2005, it was my Mom.  Then, I moved in with Harry and he became my emergency contact.  After he passed away in January, I moved back in with my parents, so it was back to my Mom. Now that my parents have moved across the country, I have no one.  The closest family I have is in Maryland and in case of emergency, that is a pretty long drive.  For now, I am continuing to put my Mom’s cell phone, which is still a 631 area code, so the ladies at the doctor’s office don’t give me funny looks.  Let’s hope I have no need for an emergency contact anytime soon.  If so, I hope its not first thing in the morning, or else, Mom will still be asleep in California.

Although I am in the wake of the worst year of my life this Thanksgiving, I still have a lot of things to be thankful for:

1. My family. My parents are on the other side of the country but I talk to my Mom more now then I did when she lived a few miles away.
2. Gracie. The little kitty is my best buddy and has turned me into a morning person.  Well, almost.
3. Emily. She is the spitting image of her father, down to his mannerisms and I still get to see her every week.
4. Social Media. I found a new calling this year and it was in the form of tweets.
5. My friends. You stuck by me through everything. Thank you.
6. My Twitter followers. That’s right, all 16,000+ of you rock. Each and every one of you.
7. The Internet. Seriously.  It has changed my life.  I actually met Harry on MySpace 4 years ago today.
8. Food in my cabinets.  Even though I’m broke and I eat a lot of mac and cheese, it’s still food.
9. Clothes in my closet. Yes, they are all 2 sizes too tight.  But that’s not the clothes’ fault.  It’s mine for eating so many Oreos.
10. My memories of Harry. I got to spend the last 3 years & 2 months of his life with him and I will never forget the good times we spent together.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! What are you thankful for?

For those of you that have followed my blog for a while might remember in March when I went to get a tattoo on my wrist as a tribute to Harry.  I had “designed” it myself, although it was quite simple:  a big bold “lmL” with the words “Forever in my heart 8.11.76-1.22.09″ underneath it.  lmL was something special between Harry, Emily and myself, kind of an “inside family joke” that turned into something so much more.  I get questioned about it ALL the time (understandably so), so here is the story behind it:

Every morning, Harry and I would together walk Emily to the bus stop to send her off to school.  One of our neighbor’s kids used to wave to her Mom from the bus, but not a normal wave, she would use the hand symbol for I love you and wave it until her Mom did it back.  The first few times, I didn’t say anything and it was a few days later that Harry brought it up to me.  He said “do you see that girl waving her hand like that all the time?”  “Yes, I do, it’s funny but very cute.” So we started to do it with Emily on the bus and she loved it.  It went from a goodbye on the bus to our goodbye all the time, no matter where we were.  Anytime we were leaving each other, we would use that hand symbol instead of waving.  Harry and Emily came up with these extensive handshakes that always included the hand symbol.  We even laughed about how our neighbors were probably making fun of us now as we had of them, but we didn’t care.  After a month or two, I realized that when you typed lmL it kind of looked like the hand symbol (the l was the pinky, the m was the middle fingers and the L was your pointy finger and thumb).  So from then on, any text message, e-mail or Facebook comment ended with lmL, in addition to our daily hand gestures.  Since Harry and I kept in contact via text messages all day, lmL was used quite often.  After I spoke at Harry’s funeral, I gave his urn the lmL hand symbol for one last time.  Emily and I still do it to this day.

So, now, that you know the meaning, let’s get back to the tattoo.  You can read the original post about the tattoo here, but I will give you the synopsis: I had attended a funeral that night for a co-worker’s Mom.  I had already drawn out the tattoo and had it in my bag and on my way home, thinking about how precious life really is, decided that I should get it done.  I said out loud: “Harry, if I should get this tattoo tonight, show me a sign!”.  No more than 3 minutes later, I came up on a tattoo shop, Lucky Cat Tattoos, in Miller Place, NY.  I said to myself, “if that isn’t a sign, I don’t know what is.”  When I walked in, there was one artist who was free at the time, Rob. While he was doing the tattoo, I noticed that he spelled Forever wrong.  He had made it Forover.  At first, he said I was wrong but then realized his mistake and made the o into an e.  At the time, it was not noticeable to anyone who didn’t know about it, but it was something that bothered me since I got it.

After a few months, the o/e started to look obvious and the For in Forever and the 09 had faded out, almost to the point that it looked like they weren’t there.  I had shown this to MANY tattoo enthusiasts who balked and asked where I had gotten it done. They had never seen anything like it, especially in a tattoo that was only a few months old.  I waited another month to make sure it was completely healed before I complained.  I happened to be in the area of Lucky Cat Tattoos one day and thought I would stop in and see what they said.  I saw the store manager.  He said that the fading was “normal” on my wrist. Normal? I had never seen anything like this before. The tattoo artist that had done my tattoo was off that day.  I told the manager, “to be honest, I don’t want that artist touching my wrist again. He spelled Forever wrong!”. His response:  “That is the only way we will fix it for free,” he said.  “If you want a new artist, you will have to pay for another tattoo”.  Considering the guy had spelled something as simple as FOREVER wrong permanently on my body, I was really taken back by this.  However, I’m broke.  I could barely afford to get it done in the first place and couldn’t afford to get it re-done.  I was told when the artist was there and to come back.  Fast forward two months.  I had gotten really busy and I don’t live near the shop anymore.  I called ahead of time and got the artist on the phone.  He couldn’t remember me or the tattoo and denied the spelling mistake. He told me to come in and he would take a look.  As soon as I stopped in, he remembered me, the tattoo and the spelling mistake.  He (and the manager) told me they didn’t want to do it that night, he wanted a picture of it so that they could draw it out and figure out what letters needed to be retraced.  He said he would call me to come in at some point that week.  A week goes by, no call.  I call them and he says, “Oh, yeah, um, just come in whenever you want”.  So, back I go.  He tells me that they decided to just go over the entire tattoo again.  So basically, I could have had it done the week earlier, but had to wait a week for no reason.

I sit down in the chair and he begins.  All went well the the majority of the tattoo, until he gets to the lettering.  He tells me he is going to redraw the F with pen since you can’t really see it.  This makes me feel better but then he changes his mind. “I can see the F fine, I will just go over it again.” WELL…I guess he couldn’t see it that well because he COMPLETELY SCREWED IT UP!!!!  See the pic below of the tattoo as soon as it was finished:

The F is crooked, smaller and not lined up with the rest of the letters.  You can still see where the top of the F used to be.  I was sooooooo mad as soon as I saw it.  After I pointed it out, he realized his mistake… but it was too late.  The manager came over and suggested making all the letters bolder to fix the F.  I said, “you are not touching my skin again”.  He told me to come back in a few weeks and they would try to figure out how to fix it AGAIN.  Basically, he screwed up the ONE THING that I went to get fixed.  I also noticed later that the 1.22 looks like 7.22 now and there is no dot over the i in the word “in” as there was before.I have never, in my life, met a group of more incompetent people.  People have said in the past few days, “it’s not THAT bad”. It’s tattooed on my body, for life.  When you get tattoos, you don’t want them to be BAD at all, only perfect will do, and this is far from it.  If this was just a tattoo that had no meaning, it would be one thing, but this is a tribute to the love of my life and it has turned into a disaster. I’m hoping that the F fades AGAIN and I will go to a tattoo artist that has actual talent to get it fixed, not some 21 year old moron who doesn’t know what he is doing.  (BTW, he has an apprentice. I don’t think he should be one to teach anyone anything).

So, a word of advice: Check out your tattoo parlor before you go.  Don’t just take the artist that is available at the time.  There is probably a reason why every other artist was busy and he wasn’t.

I went out  to lunch on Thursday with a guy, my first “date” since Harry passed away. It just made me realize how much I miss him and how we were perfect together.  I was not looking to be dating yet, but was contacted via Facebook by this guy who I had gone to high school with and who didn’t live here anymore. He was back in town for a few days and wanted to take me to lunch.  As cute as this guy (who will remain nameless) was, I could tell all he wanted was to hook up. First red flag: taking me to a bar and ordering endless drinks.  Now, I can drink with the best of them. But at noon on a Thursday? I don’t know, just not my thing.  Second red flag: Putting the moves on me as soon as we arrive at my apartment after lunch.  When I pushed him away and said I wasn’t ready, this was the conversation:

Me: “I’m sorry, I’m just not there yet. Harry only passed away in January.  I feel like he’s here watching me, upset that I even went out to lunch with you.”

Date: “Don’t you think Harry would want you to be happy?”

Me: “Yes, I know he would want me happy,  but I don’t think he would want me to be hooking up with a random guy 9 months after he died.”

Date: “But aren’t you lonely?”

Me: “Yes, but that doesn’t mean that I will just hook up with someone just to hook up.”

He left soon after this conversation, ran actually, out of my apartment, saying something about dinner with his family.  Funny he never mentioned having to leave before that.  That night, I sent him a text message telling him that I would love to see him again before he leaves, but there will be no hooking up going on, that I just wasn’t like that.  He did not reply.  I then sent him a long e-mail to explain where I was coming from.  Still, nothing.  Fast forward three days later.  I receive a text message from him.  It says:

“I’m leaving tonight.  This is your last opportunity to **** it.”

Seriously??? I ask him if he ever read the e-mail.  He says his e-mail is screwed up and he never got it, and again asks if he can see me. I shouldn’t have even taken the time to write the e-mail.  He obviously wanted one thing.  Just goes to show you.  Men can be thoughtless pigs….no I take that back. Men do think, they just do it with their penis.

Harry’s birthday was yesterday.   He would have been 33.  Since he’s passed away, I’ve made it through Valentine’s Day and July 4th.  Independence day was hard for me since that was always our time of the year to have a vacation alone.  I pretty much curled myself in a ball & didn’t get out of bed the whole day.  He’s been gone for over 6 months & I still cry every day.  He was the light of my life.  He made me smile when I was sad, made me laugh till my cheeks hurt.   I wish I could just have one more minute with him. I wish I would have not rushed out the door that morning without kissing him goodbye.   They say guilt comes early in the grief process, but I still feel it every day.  I probably always will.  Happy Birthday Harry. I hope you have found the peace that you searched for. You are terribly missed.

Last Wednesday night, I attended the wake for the mother of two of my co-workers (brothers).  Being at a funeral home again, that smell of the flowers, just the whole thing was really hard.  It reminded me again that life is so precious.  I only stayed for a little bit and headed for the long ride home.  I was thinking about how I wanted to get the tattoo for Harry that I had already drawn out and was in my wallet. I said, “Harry, if I should get it tonight, show me a sign”.  Less then 3 minutes later I saw a sign for a tattoo shop!

I went in and there was an artist available to do the tattoo then.  I decided to utilize my new phone to its full potential and document the entire process. I took a before picture of my wrist:

I wondered if I should mention the Coumadin?  I decided not to say anything.  Luckily, I didn’t bleed AT ALL.

lmL looks like the hand sign in sign language for “I love you”.  Harry, Emily and I started doing that hand sign a few months into our relationship anytime we said goodbye.  Instead of a wave, it was lmL.  In texts and e-mails we used lmL to do it.

I am so happy with it.  I have other tattoos (ankle and back), and was worried that it would hurt on my wrist, but it hurt more afterwards then when I was getting it done.

On a side note: I’m putting back up comments on my blog.  Go ahead haters, hate away.  I will be monitoring the comments and if they get out of hand, they will be deleted on a comment by comment basis

Save Becky has become a world-wide sensation.  Since it’s inception on Sunday, Feb 8th, it’s had over 2,500 hits from 10 different countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, Austria, Singapore, Costa Rica, Germany, Trinidad and Tobago and Argentina.  Apparently, the word is spreading, and I have received e-mails from all walks of life.  A lot of readers are asking me to put the comments back up on the blog and also put the donations link back up.  The reason I took the comments down was because people were bad-mouthing not only me, but Harry as well.  I can take it, but he is not here to defend himself.  I might add a page of my replies to the haters because they are really funny.  People are really dumb.  For the time being, the blog comments will stay removed.

I also would like to put some more thought into taking donations.  I took it down because people thought I was trying to “profit” from Harry’s death, which couldn’t be further from the truth.  If I put the link back up, people will still think this, but I will be be $1 closer to a new life with each donation.   I got an e-mail from an ex-coworker that said: “Become an adult, and do without for the next few years and pay off the balance.  Sorry but you can’t expect people to feel bad for you.  You created the life you have now.”  Isn’t that SWEET?  She was always a PEACH.   I didn’t create the problems I had, except the debt.  I do not want others to feel bad for me, I want others to help me get back to the person I once was.  Since comments are banned, send your thoughts on the donations to my e-mail. I would love to hear what everyone else has to say.

Tonight, I went out with my little valentine, Emily.  We went to the Outback with her mom, Stephanie and then went back to their apartment and played on her Wii.  I was a Wii virgin until today and I must say I did rather good.  We played “Carnival Games”, and I popped two balloons in the dart game and got 4 rings on the bottles.  If I could only actually do that at a real life carnival?  Those things are impossible!!  Mitzie is getting adjusted to her new home and actually has made friends with Stephanie’s cat Diesel.  Emily is doing great too, she got Valentines from all the kids in her new class and has been getting along with her little sister.  Me, I’m not doing so good.

It’s Valentines Day and “Dead and Gone” by T.I. and Justin Timberlake is on. Perfect.  Valentine’s Day sucks when you are single, but it REALLY sucks when your soul mate has just passed away.  I went through almost the whole day without crying, but caved in the last 2 hours.   I miss my best friend.  I talked about Harry today a lot.   Everything reminds me of him.  We ordered Kookabura wings at the Outback cause they were Harry’s favorite.  Yesterday I watched that new Rob Dyrdek show, “Fantasy Factory”, thinking Harry would have loved this!  He watched every Rob & Big episode much more than once.  I always told him the theme song in the beginning reminded me of him. I would sing along whenever it was on TV and I always changed the lyrics in the second verse to mang instead of man, since Harry and I called each other mang all the time.  I believe it started the day we watched that Terrence Howard movie, “Hustle and Flow”.  “What’s up, mang?”

The theme song from Rob & Big pretty much sums up Harry to me:

People let me tell you ’bout my best friend,

He’s a warm-hearted person who’ll love me till the end.

People let me tell you ‘bout my best friend,

He’s a one boy cuddly toy, my up, my down, my pride and joy.

People let me tell you ’bout him he’s so much fun

Whether we’re talkin’ mang to mang or whether we’re talking son to son.

Cause he’s my best friend.

Yes he’s my best friend.

Harry was my up, my down, my pride and joy.  Harry was a fun warm-hearted person who loved me to the end.  He was my entire life and is terribly missed by everyone.  Rest in Peace Mang.  You will forever be my boobalabebele.

It’s almost been 3 weeks.  Tomorrow.  It really feels like a blur.  I went back there last night and cleaned out our junk drawers.  For 3 years, I don’t know if anything has ever come out of there, but it’s amazing how many things I found that have gone in: 2 different size light bulbs (without packaging), new gift tags from years ago, fly paper, a multi-purpose funnel and easter egg color dippers.  It’s these types of things I was unsure what to do with.  Perhaps I’d have a fly problem in a new apartment, and might need fly paper 2 years from now?  Or maybe might need to pour liquid into a bottle?  Or want to color easter eggs?  So I just kept it all.  It’s all in a pile on the desk now instead of in the drawers.
I broke down and cried when I was going through Harry’s night table and found the ad I designed in the NY Post from January 20th, two days before he died.  I had brought home the paper to show him that day, he said he was so proud of me but I didn’t know he had kept it.  Last week, in his closet, I found a bag of torn up notes.  We had a big fight two years ago and I took all the notes he gave me and I ripped them up.  Then, in retaliation he did it to all my notes too.  We made up but I never noticed that the notes had gone missing.  I guess he took them all and kept them, they were all in this big ziplock bag.  I have so many notes Harry wrote me after that, but maybe one day I’ll tape together the ones in the bag too.

I have removed the option to leave comments on this blog.   If you would like to respond, please send me an e-mail. I will be creating a page with snippets from all the supportive e-mails I have received to date, probably tomorrow, or Friday.  These kind e-mails are keeping me going, so please keep them coming.  If you have nothing nice to say, move on, please.