Fight Like Mike FRIDAY
Friday April 1 , 2022
Dear Fight Like Mike Army.
Thank you for loving us through another 365 days of missing Mike.
Every single one of those days I have missed him .
Losing him and living with out him ,
has by far been the hardest thing I have ever done.
But each day
these past years and the years before he died,
We have been carried through each day
By your love
And this week I am allowing the love,
To be greater than the pain of death.
For this week at least.
I have written hundreds
of tear jerking , super sad,
full of self pity,
letters to Mike , God, and you.
About grief and all the emotions
I have been working through with Ginny
for the past two years.
I am not saint, I am human.
I have anger, regret , and self pity.
But at the core of each letter,
as I have said before, and my dad reminded me this week.
It is simple.
We just simply ....
flat out miss him.
And I thank God I always will.
But as I had a letter to you ready to send this week,
I received an email from someone in Augusta.
Asking me to write something about Dr. Kota.
Wednesday was Doctors Day.
And so I spent the next 24 hours reflecting
On the journey between him and Mike.
He believed in Mike ,
When no one else did.
And each of you seems to believe in me that way.
If you have been through pain and loss,
I am sure you would agree that believing in yourself
seems impossible.
“ When faith is a whisper,
And the pain is a shout”
In order to write about him,
I was forced to think
of gratitude verse the pain of loss.
I had been encouraged by love ones to listen to a podcast
Where Kate Bowler interview Mitch Albom.
He is the author of Tuesdays with Morrie and The Stranger in the Life Boat.
At the end he says,
“If you focus on being grateful for being given something, you don’t have time to get angry over having lost it.
It’s the truth. And sometimes truths are simple like that”
And it helped.
This past week , You have given me even more to be grateful for.
My mom and Becky tied blue and orange Fight Like Mike balloons on the mailboxes of our street.
As I drove home from taking the kids to school
And drove past each one.
My eyes filled with tears.
But my heart was filled with an
enormous amount of gratitude.
As I thought of you all
Our Fight Like Mike Army.
It wasn’t just Mike fighting
It was each of you.
As I thought of each thing you all have done
Suddenly the pain
Eased even more.
Cards. Texts. Flowers.
An unexpected ring of the door bell after I had tucked myself back under the covers after getting the kids to school.
Fresh bread. Homemade Chex mix.
Food. Uber eats gift cards. Target runs.
Donuts delivered. T-shirts. Wine mailed.
Neighbors who line your driveway with lanterns.
FLM signs and bows made.
Balloons. Cookie cakes. Ginger cookies.
Flowers. Flowers. Flowers.
Automatic draft of bills set up.
Financing taking care of.
Cardinals in every way shape and form
Cars cleaned and detailed. Gutters cleaned.
Air filters changed. Christmas lights strung.
Driveways blown off. Saint Michael candles.
Kids taken for spend the night parties. To the movies.
Or shuttled them to birthday parties or sporting events.
Emails. Websites updated.
Texts just Simply remembering Mike
with an orange heart 🧡 emoji.
And on and on and on.
Loved. Loved. Loved.
It wasn’t just this week , it’s some act of love every day.
That has kept me
from drowning in the trenches
of my own tears.
Instead,
you have kept me swimming through them .
You have allowed gratitude
To keep me afloat.
So today , on this FightLike Mike Friday..
Two Simple Truths:
I miss Mike with every cell of my being , every second, of every day.
But gratitude ,gratitude has not given me time to be angry.
I am thankful to have been given the gift of being asked to write about Mike and Dr. Kota.
It changes my perspective.
It was just what I needed.
Below is the poem I wrote about them.