In retrospect...

I took a trip up to New York to see my FIL this past weekend. It was a good trip, and it was a bad trip. It was good because my kids got the opportunity to meet 7 of their 1st cousins that they'd previously never met. It was bad because it broke my heart to see how much cancer had taken from my FIL.



I packed for the camping trip (my FIL is spending his last few months embracing his love for the outdoors) with intentions of documenting everything. Those plans went out the window when we got there and I saw him with my own eyes. I didn't want to remember his pain or his suffering, and after talking to him for a while, I gathered that he didn't want me to remember it either. I have tons of pictures and memories of him while his vibrancy still over out shined his illness. Those are the pictures that I want, those are the memories that I will cherish. It broke my heart to hear him say that he didn't want me to see him like that, not because of misplaced rejection, but because i found myself agreeing with him. A man with a heart as golden as his should never be touched by anything as vile and evil as cancer or illness. I will forever remember him as the spunky, hilarious, "dirty old-man" that offered to walk me down the aisle if my father couldn't because that is the man that I made room in my heart for.



The entire weekend wasn't as somber as my last paragraph. I found out that my BIL, Doug, stumbled across my gallery at SB.com and he emailed the link to everyone in the family. I was bombarded with tons of praise from family members about the layouts that I didn't even know they'd seen. The funny thing is that that praise meant so much more to me than what I received from my fellow scrappers. Don't get me wrong, I like that people like my pages, it's just that I often get family recognition for them. It's a different type of validation, different, but no less/more appreciated...well...sorta. Anyway, hearing the positives really motivated me to keep putting my pages up. It was kind of weird because I've been struggling with keeping my motivation up while not allowing myself to put much stock in external validation. I totally feel like a kid who just got to have her cake and eat it too. I've reconnected with the whole "scrap for your family thing" simply by finding family outside my immediate who are interested in seeing my work. One comment in particular that struck me was made by my SIL. She mentioned that she felt as if she'd actually watched my copies grow up simply by viewing my gallery of layouts.

"Wow!" That was all I could conjure by way of a response.



Well, now that I'm back and refocused, I need to recommit to this hobby. Having battles some nasty demons and lived to tell about it, I think that I am ready to reclaim my enthusiasm. I have some painful scrapping to do, particularly some documenting of my illness...just to purge the poison that fear has left in me. I plan to scrap until I am emotionally raw and bare...I need to...it's my poor man's therapy. One day, I might be able to share those pages, but for now, it's just for me.



BUT before I get to the therapy I'm concocting a page about my FIL that I think he'll love.

It's going to be about how much of a hottie he was and the picture that I'm going to use is an old black and white one of him in his 20's. In the picture, he's holding this huge fish he'd just caught and he has a cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth. I swear he was channeling James Dean in that picture! I was awarded that picture a few years ago when my FIL had had his fill of my talking about how hot he looked in it, he presented it to me while lovingly giving me permission to kiss it every night before I went to sleep so that I could have "studly" dreams. Is it any wonder that I love that man so much? This weekend he made a comment about how he's no James Dean anymore, to which I responded that he would always be my hottie.



And you know what? He will...



TFR