This is hard.
Tomorrow will be 23 years since we started dating! And tomorrow morning I will meet at the cemetery to choose a final resting spot for my best friend. Later in the afternoon I will meet at the funeral home for a pre planning session. This is the “business” of death as a dear friend called it. It’s just as hard as the grieving. They are intertwined. And yet at times one must overtake the other out of necessity. So I’m choosing to do this now. To get the details in order before Nick passes, so that when the time comes I can just be. I can sit in my grief for awhile. Let go of all the emotions from the last several months. Snuggle my kids and bring them comfort only a mother can, as best as I can. But this is hard. This is the last time I will lay out his clothes. In ordinary times this would be the norm of the day – work, an auction, a speaking event, business dinner, travel. All so familiar and yet so very different now. Nick may have broke the “white shirt” rule in the handbook. 
He got bored of white. His favorite was a blue dress shirt. So that’s what he will wear. And of course how could he not represent the mission he dedicated his adult life to? And I just had to choose our favorite tie. It’s strange but I will miss seeing it. He always cleaned up so well and I loved him in a suit. It is a strange existence to do his laundry, folding it, realizing he will never again wear it. And yet I hope & half expect him to sit up and say, “I’m starving! Get me some food woman! And boy do I have some things to tell you!”I plead for a miracle and yet must go about the business required. Several years ago I was on retreat and a priest told me that my life now was the Pieta. It was true then, but even more true now. I am counting on you all to pray me through the hard stuff. The cough sounds better and the lungs are clear. 
There is now swelling in his fingers and a purple hue is making an appearance. His left side started to twitch with regularity. The brain and overload of the nerves calls the shots. No one can say when the time will come. He is young and his heart is healthy, so it could be weeks possibly. We don’t know. But then again none of us does. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
