D I've had such a great day today and more than anything I wish I could tell you about it and share the photos. Today was Tree day you know the day we put the Christmas Tree up and you watch on the cam or you play music for us. Well I played your Christmas music and we giggled at some of the sound files we made and the Tree looks wonderful it has so many Christmas balls on it I dont know how its standing up. Then we had the early family Christmas dinner it was actually a lot of fun today everyone had a good time. Just kind of thought you were here with me all day helping and sharing the day with us all.

14.2.1998

I was looking for a photo on a old CD and came across this text file that I had put together on the 14.2.98 to send to Donn and some how on Thanksgiving it seems like a msg from Donn on how very lucky we were to have found each other.

"When i think of how much you mean to me
i stop to count my blessings..
i feel you in my heart,in my soul and in my mind..
and i wonder how i got so fortunate
to have met someone as wonderful as you..
but yet im not able to hold you, touch you or kiss you.
When i look at your face
even from a picture
i cant help but wonder what it would be like
having you as mine...
To love, to touch, to caress
and to look for you at the end of each day...
wanting to please you in every way...
makes the waiting worth while..
waiting all my life for you to come my way
made this journey worth all the pain...
I love you more with each passing day..
you emcompass my heart and envelope my soul..
your my first thoughts in the morning
and my last thoughts at night as i lay my head to sleep..
My heart and soul are yours for the taking when i can be yours...
so baby just know my feelings are deep and strong
and wanting us to be together as we belong..

So what a combination a Texan and a Aussie.....How did it
happened....specially when New2Mirc is not a pickup channel..
or so us OPs in there pride ourselves on telling newbies....
It was the first channel I entered as a newbie knowing nothing about
about Mirc.....and who offered to teach me but a very sexy Texan "Mongoose"
well what hope did I have?? I received beautiful Yellow Texas Roses....
wav files of a gorgeous Texas Drawl....Well nearly 8 months later and
3 weeks spent in Texas on the most romantic adventure of my life....
I've found my Soul Mate...
Later this year The Texan is moving to Australia!!!!!
So stay tuned for the sequel to the most romantic love
adventure since Superman gave up his powers for Lois Lane.


Donn you are my first thought in the morning...my last thought before I sleep.....my dreams both day and night.... and my thoughts in between...you encompass my heart and soul...and you give me reason to go on.....you are my love and my life and i cherish every moment with you...from now until the end of time...I love you baby."


Happy Thanksgiving sweetheart as for me I will always be truly grateful that I got to spend 12 wonderful years with you.

My mushy D

I am sitting here giving myself a hug from Donn in that I am wearing his favourite jacket and every time I put it on I shut my eyes and see him wearing it and remember how it felt to be in his arms with him hugging me tight. So each time I put it on I just think of it as a hug from Donn I find it really helps.

I also found this part of a msn chat conversation between Donn and I earlier and found myself gigglin that man was such a mushy sweet flirt

10/05/2008 11:42:26 AM GooSe thats when I love you the most
10/05/2008 11:42:26 AM samm why what ya mean
10/05/2008 11:43:53 AM GooSe when I take your picture, you don't EVER EVER tell me to wait so you can "pimpup"; fix your hair, etc.
10/05/2008 11:44:10 AM samm hahahahahahahah
10/05/2008 11:44:30 AM GooSe your smile is so beautiful, you don't have to fix.

Just need to come hang out in here I just miss my D and I just made the mistake of listening to his songs he made for me and hearing his voice just bought back that sharp edge grief of simply more than anything wanting to hear his voice hear him telling me the words to comfort me and to make me strong so I can help support Jenny with the tragic accidental loss of her kind wonderful husband Terry.
The thing with My Sweetie D is that he would listen and let me talk out my anger, frustration, sadness with whatever it was work, kids, family friends etc and then he would try and make suggestions to help or give me a different perspective on the situation but the one thing he would ALWAYS say is "keep your chin up" he always wanted to make me smile. There is no doubt in my mind it was our ability and love of making each other laugh that got us through the times apart. I so miss our laughter... but I am doing better I know right now I have been reminded of the early dark grief stricken days but I am clinging on to the steps I've made in going forward. I am eating healthy I have starting walking and in the last 2 weeks lost 2.8 kilos. I've started having my nails done again and even cancel my next session with the grief counselor. So I am really wanting to not take on Jenny's extreme grief and instead be the person she has been for me. Provide warmth, support and a place of hope and normalcy that there will be joy of many types in my life in the yrs to come.

Not to focus on that normally this time of the yr Donn and I would be so excited with only 8 weeks till we got to touch again.
So to plan on how to get through this ext 2 months of Christmas and New Year I am going to ask myself every day " what have I done today to make life better for someone"? just simple things.

school holidays

I've been doing so much better but now I feel tired emotional and i miss Donn stupid incident at work just got to me and its last day of term 3 and a week to Donn's birthday it's normally these holidays when Donn and i start to get really excited about seeing each other as its just 10 weeks till I would normally go to Fort Worth and here i am just feeling like crying and it makes me mad mad at myself mad at the whole world
I just feel like i am trying so hard to be ok and not to feel sad all the time and to start give a damn about how I look and here I am sitting here alone and crying feeling sorry for myself. I need to snap out stop crying and focus on the positives in my life... Like its 2 weeks school holidays I am going to Melbourne to stay with essee, Inky and daggs and they have the best holiday planned out for me so I should be jumping for joy not sitting here in floods of tears.
I just hate it I start to believe that I am dealing with things better and then some special memory or date comes up and I feel like I am back to square one againw ith missing Donn and wanting to talk to him and hear his voice.

Layout of the Day – Me Now

Layout of the Day – Me Now

so tired

So I had my first session with Lyn the grief councilor and I just feel so over overwhelmingly exhausted. The hour went by so fast in fact it seemed like 5 mins I mostly cried for the whole time she was a really nice lady the room was very pleasant two large couches to sit on. Lyn asked me if i had ever though of writing mine and Donn's story such that it is so beautiful. The ongoing12 year honey moon never having to deal with the drudgery of every day life. At the end she said given just what i had told her in that one session that i should not waste 1 min feeling guilty about not staying with Donn at the end because Donn loved me so much that he wouldn't want me to feel bad about anything and in fact given the nature of our relationship being long distance that somehow our story went full circle given that I was on the phone talking to him when he took his last breathe. She also said that I need to cry that bottling it up and stopping myself from releasing my pain just takes away from my ability to cope with anything. That where I'm at right now is just where I am at I cant move myself from my pain and that i need to stop feeling bad for crying. I told her the story of how when Donn asked me how old I was I told him I was born in the yr JFK was assassinated so he then went on to ask me a 100 questions about his death which I cheated and looked up the encyclopedia before answering him of course he didn't know that as we were chatting online he just thought i was a slow typist he was simply amazed that I would know so much about JFK later as in a yr or so later when I told him what I had done he thought it was so damn funny of course now days I would have googled for the answers but back in 1997 that was pre google.
At the end I just didn't feel like an hr was long enough to have some one just sit and listen to me talk and cry and laugh about my memories of Donn with out me having to hold back my emotions was wonderful to have some one get how much I miss him and how very sad I feel and some one letting me know that not only is it ok for me to cry but really very desirable . She also asked me or made the comment about me being thankful for being so loved in the context of that many many ppl never get to know the joy and love that Donn and i shared.
Has it helped I am not sure part of me was too upset to really listen to her words of advice so maybe when I am not feeling so tired and so emotionally drained more of what she said will come back to me.

LIke me wonderign if i had been there if I had stayed woudl Donn still be alive today of course he wouldnt he was getting the best medical treatment he knew I loved him if he could have lived he would have. I jsut miss him. I miss us and how we were together we were "the Blur squad", DCCD, Pan and Tink , Rhett and Scarlett, samm and GooSe just miss him.

a Note from a Friend

I understand how you feel, Caro and this is JUST the place you should be sharing your blues. I do know, a little, how you feel, although no one can know it exactly. Every year we hang ornaments on the Christmas tree and the first time I hung them myself, he was still alive, but dying. I was alone with the tree and the ornaments..and I knew he would never hang them again. It was heartbreaking and I wrote this poem.

My tree is clothed in dark and light
And I sit before it in the night
Remembering how, with loving care,
A child once hung those trinkets there
And though the tree seems fully dressed
Alone, I now must hang the rest
Then the tree with greater love will shine
With memories of that son of mine.
I hang the sparkle from his eyes
That shone each day with sweet surprise,
I hang a gentle heart-shaped kiss
The one that I would always miss.
I hang a bow of loving charms,
And a hug he once held in his arms
Now every light will hold a part
Of all the memories in my heart
For though my grief will never sleep
His heart would break, and he would weep
If we never again felt the Christmas Joy
That was so much a part of my wonderful boy.

But I built new traditions where we honour him and remember him each year, in a positive and happy way. Every time my spirits sink low and I don't feel like celebrating, I remember a mother I met in a grief group whose daughter died on Thanksgiving and she refused to celebrate it. Her whole family wore shirts with the daughter's picture on and picked up McDonalds and ate it by the daughter's grave. It was awful and this was 14 years after the girl died!! Chris loved Christmas and he would be so sad if we didn't celebrate it without him.

Holidays have extra memories - we have to learn to cope with that and be grateful for that. It takes time - this is your first year and you are still limping along.

But - two years ago for CIJ - I did this layout - over 11 years after Chris died... I still grieve and so will you, always.


The journaling says:

For one moment, one, breath,

one heartbeat, I would like to have you back. I want to say I love you one more time and tell you how much I miss you and how much my heart has ached every day since you’ve been gone. I want to take a breath in a world where you are alive and where all the tears are tears of joy.

This is my Christmas Wish...

Random thoughts to catch up

So it has been over a month since I last posted kind of wish that it's because I am doing better but in fact really doing worse not better I've just seem to have sunk into this terrible sort of sadness that has me just crying at the most random and frequent times. I just want to be miserable I miss Donn and I guess I am angry and resentful that I have to live with out him. Knowing he kept every promise he ever made me just makes me feel even angrier he promised to love me till the day he died he just never told me that that meant I would have to live with out him.

I did find this totally wonderful sound file that Donn recorded of me singing Happy birthday to him and the dog howling to my singing and all you can hear in the bg is Donn laughing it truly is so wonderful being able to listen to him laughing.

I just wonder if I will ever share that kind of joy or happiness again will anyone ever know me and love me again the way Donn did or am I destined to forever be sad and to just look to the day that I am with Donn again.

Right now I feel pretty invisible like I am living on the fringe of everyone else life with out any real direction of my own.
I did have a really wonderful conversation with James Donn's best friend on July 4TH we LAUGHED AND CRIED TOGETHER Donn loved James like a bro and out of every one James really comes closest to feeling my level of grief and loss but hearing his beautiful voice and having him tell me how he loved me as a sister just made me cry harder as he sounds so like Donn and it just reminds me of all I have lost.

I did have the most beautiful dream about Donn and it did bring me a real sense of comfort. I dreamt that I had gone to Fort Worth to visit Donn's grave site and when I got there Crystal Shana's daughter picked me up from the airport to take me to the cemetery when we got to the cemetery I went to the information booth to get directions to Donn's grave site well then I walking along between all the crosses and Donn was walking with me holding my hand kissing me and we were laughing we walked around the cemetery all the while looking for his grave site and then when I woke up I realised Donn didn't know where to find it either as he is not there he is with me.

To give myself a Birthday ay gift from Donn I went through the 100s of cards he has sent me over the yrs and reread all the birthday cards from him for previous yrs they all made me smile. Every one was always with him wanting to make me smile and to let me know how much he loved me.

Then other days when i feel like I want to throw my computer out take down all my photos of Donn put all the reminders away as I just feel overwhelmed by what I have lost and just need to escape from everyone and everything that reminds me . Then other days when I want to reread and listen and watch everything i can just again to feel surrounded in the love that Donn had for me.

Going away with my friends for a few days was a welcomed distraction and sure beats sitting home alone.

I also got the most beautiful gift in the mail from Donn's sister and Mother it was a beautiful angel and silver bracelet that has engraved on it "Nothing is impossible for you if you have faith:.

Altered Life

So how am I doing hmmmmm not sure I want to think too much about that question. I wish there was concrete proof of what happens after you die. I know different people believe different things. For 45 yrs I've been taught as a Catholic that when you die you go to heaven where you get to be reunited with all your love ones. Well sounds nice and I sure truly want to believe that is the case because the thought of never getting to be with Donn again is simply more than I can bear. Which then makes me also question the concept of angels it makes me feel so wonderful to think of Donn as my special angel who is always with me but how do I know if it really is true or just something we tell ourselves to make the grief just a little easier.
Is it possible as occured in the Ghost Whisperer for one persons spirit to enter into another person is there a chance for Donn to come back to me albeit in another form? Then there is Donn's sister going to see a lady who claims to be able to talk to the recent departed on Saturday and she is convinced this woman can give messages from the dead. All of this sure making me feel a little crazy. I know it is all normal to go through this as more than anything I cant bear to think that all Donn and i will ever get to have is the 11 years we did I need to believe he is with me and we will be together for the whole of eternity.