February 18th, 2021

The Fog

12 months, 365 days. 

It may as well have been a lifetime...

365 days later the world has evolved, out of necessity it has morphed and shaped itself into something unrecognizable. A never-ending landscape of land mines litter the surface of everyday life for so many. As if to mock us with her eternal normality, the sun still rises and sets each day, but back here on Earth the days of normalcy seem like a lifetime ago.

For months, a dense and all-consuming fog settled over our world, offering a fleeting sense of escape, sheltering us from the fierce early days and empty nights of grief. Its thick filtering blanket that gently softened the edges of life distorting its harsh, unrelenting view however, has slowly shriveled and wilted away, curling into itself to reveal reality’s abrasive and damaged surface. 

How did we get here?

Shattered and broken life still goes on, it leaves little time to wallow.  Carpools, parent-teacher conferences, Taekwondo belt tests (you would have been so proud), lost teeth, Christmas, New Years; like an invisible crutch the fog carried us through, numbing us. But as we navigated through the gentle fog, we too changed.  Its sheltering arms helped take on the brunt force of trauma allowing us to grow stronger.

 We’ve been camping, off-roading, we’ve rented RV’s, we went to the snow. We are living each day in your memory. We pay it forward. We cry, we laugh, we love. We love hard.  We do it all with you.

We’ve learned that beneath that fog lives happiness. Like this foreign life we find ourselves in; this new happiness has molded and shaped itself into something previously unrecognizable. Distorted and hidden as it may be, it is still happiness. And we know you’re there above it all, above that fog, watching us, shaping us, carrying us through.

Thank you to the frontline healthcare workers, specifically those at Saddleback Memorial and Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical center who fought around the clock for 21 days, fiercely and tirelessly on Jon’s behalf.