Dear Michelle (my Chérie, Michou),
I can’t believe it has been 3 years, Chérie. I should have done letters earlier but we had a pandemic and grief is kind of an interesting thing. So from now on, I will send you letters every year.
First of all, I believe you would be proud of where we are. I guess the house could be a bit more cleaner but otherwise , the state of the Vagnati USA union is strong. Leo graduated and went to his favorite college (in a small town like you would have liked). He made a TedX about your experience. And he got a prestigious award from Saint Francis (we made the right school choice, Go lancers). Eva is a Junior , driving and doing great. Obviously being the woman of the house is not easy but she gets around and for sure will know how to handle boys!
As for me, it always has its ups and downs. But that’s what life is. We would have had ups and downs even with you here. I learned a few things though: I learned to compartmentalize images of you in my head. When you are sick, I visualize them when I need to be strong. When you are young and beautiful, I visualize them when I need to remember how lucky I am to have married such a beautiful, caring, genuine woman. Basically taking the positive angle of every picture… that’s my new life mindset!
Reminiscing of what happened 3 years ago, I have this metaphor of this trapeze in my head. When you were with us, you were on the trapeze and me/kids were hanging at your feet (basically weight on you). You were trying to make us all swing by yourself. When you were sick, you moved this trapeze as much as you could to send us off to our own trapeze. And obviously we did land on one… Some people may decide to drop but I think in our case we used the momentum from your push, to go higher (maybe even doing tricks in the air… I guess that would be Leo and Eva). I don’t think we would have experienced this resiliency, this compassion for all others, this love for what we have without what happened to you. And for this, I’m eternally grateful and thankful. Now I’m not saying that I would not have preferred to stay on the first trapeze!
On another front, I continued running. My goal is to finish the LA Marathon 2023 (3/19/2023) for you. First you wanted to do another one after all your treatment. Second, it will be 2 days before our 20th Wedding anniversary. Third, it keeps me in better shape physically and mentally! Fourth, we can raise awareness for #curesarcoma and #michoustrong!
Talking about hashtags, I have been thinking about how newly widowed people could learn about how to go through their own experience. Since I have some experience, I’m going to start creating some content for this. I registered www.loss.wtf (not built yet…).
Lastly, we all miss you so much. I know I’m the one writing but I can testify that you made such an impact on a lot of people’s lives. Chérie, even though your life was too short, you should be proud of this!
Last last point, today for the first time, I’m older than you! Love you and I hope I age well for the 2 of us :)
Love, love, love and I will love you more…
XoXo
GV
