I am busy this morning tying up loose ends from Monday's golf tournament. I've uploaded the photos to the foundation website, so check them out. Lots of smiling faces and fun foursomes there! Here's the link: www.shannonoharafoundation.org.
It's strange to me the things that elicit emotion. Monday, we had 140 people together honoring Shannon, and I didn't shed a tear. Yesterday, I took a photo of Shannon down off the wall and it got to me. I think I will continue to learn about grief for the rest of my life...
I wanted to hang some photos from our trip to Ireland. We decided on a wall in our basement. A wall where pictures of Shannon and Erin from the summer of 2011 have been hanging for the last 4 years. Erin was ready to take down the pics that showed her a a little 10 year old, smiling while watching Shannon battle.
So, those pictures will find a new home somewhere else, or maybe just in my mind. Time does march on. We've been new places and seen new things in the past three years. Erin wants to see that forward progress hanging outside her door. So we made the change.
I am coming to realize that this year will be a really tough one. Shannon's classmates are seniors. Some of them are already posting their senior pictures on social media. I've sat in on several conversations about college visits and the next stage of life. It's just going to be really hard, as milestones tend to be.
I'm sad I didn't get to see Shannon as a senior in high school. I'm sad we didn't get to experience the madness of choosing a college with her. I guess I'm allowed to feel that way. Most of the time I'm able to carry on and move ahead and know that we did all we could while she was here. But, we got short changed, and sometimes that's still painful. I think it always will be...
The pictures of Ireland that now hang on the wall look beautiful. It doesn't mean we've forgotten what used to hang there. It means we are living because of what we learned during that summer of 2011.
It's Shannon's birthday week. What a smart, sassy 17-year-old she could have been...
