A year ago today....

It's hard to believe it's been a year. It seems like yesterday. I remember VIVIDLY everything about Christmas last year. Melissa was SO happy to be home (at least to mom & dad's)...it was so good to have her home. Not easy, but good. She came home from Hospice with at least 13 different meds...took the first PILLS at 6 a.m., then 9, noon, 3, 6, 9. She NEVER complained. EVER. Loved having visitors (kind of quiet here this year)....LOVED having Drew here. He LOVED having Aunt Fort here - very curious about all the oxygen tubing... and Aunt Fort's oxygen mask...and the bed in the family room! I remember right after we got her home - I went upstairs for something. When I came back down to the family room - she was GONE. She was easy to find though. She was attached to about 45 feet of oxygen tubing. I followed the tubing to the basement, where she was just wandering around. I couldn't believe she could walk down the steps...I shouldn't have been surprised though. She was so happy just to be able to move around in familiar surroundings. Just checkin' everything out. OH how good it was to have her here. She really wanted to go to a Fairmont girls basketball game, but never made that. (I was so afraid she would get SICK... so many people out there with the FLU... OMG. The FLU? What in the world was I thinking. So when she said she wanted to go shopping, we went. Someone asked recently "what did she get you"...and when I read her post about the shopping trip, I realized she didn't say what she got us,just that "it was something that would benefit HER as well as us!"...She hated our computer monitor - wasn't big enough for her - so she bought us a moniter. She wheeled herself around Target and told me to "STAY AWAY"...I don't even think she let John help her - he just followed her around with the cart, letting her fill it. And Christmas Eve? We had fun watching Drew open his first present...and promised that "next year, I'm taking everything out of the boxes before I wrap them"....I loved the sound of that...Christmas NEXT year. And she said more than once "this is the BEST Christmas EVER."

And here we are. NEXT Christmas. It's hard to believe. A WHOLE year without her. I miss her voice, her LAUGHTER especially. We have so many WONDERFUL memories of that BEST CHRISTMAS EVER.

From our family to yours - we wish YOU the BEST CHRISTMAS EVER....

and of course, Fort would always end a post with the "cutest baby ever"....
now we have TWO of the cutest babies ever....

Aunt Fort helping Drew with a present...



Aunt Fort with Drew on Christmas Eve...



Drew - having fun a grandmas...a year later


Max - 4 mos.

Merry Christmas from our home to yours....

FORT'S Dream

Found it. I saved just about every email she sent me in the last couple of years...this was actually November 2007...just SEEMED like it was only a few months before...

From Fort -
I had the wildest dream last night….just a non stop eventful evening of dreams, but the one thing that really stuck out (and you know they always say your dreams are supposed to reflect your life or something) was, I was swimming in the ocean with a friend (I don’t know who the friend was) and there was a big black shark circling us. But I wasn’t afraid of it. And then the shark starts talking and its like, “Hey watch this” and all the people watching from the pier are getting freaked out and the shark keeps making these lunges like its coming after me, and everyone on the pier is on edge but I know the shark isn’t going hurt me. Im actually amused by it.



Weird, huh?

DREAMS

Fort always ended a post with a "ISN"T HE CUTE" photo of Drew...since I STILL don't know what I'm doing, really, I tried to end with the photo, but I'm starting with the photo of Drew AND MAX! Then on to the dreams....


Every once in awhile, Fort would post a "Question of the Day". Usually it was something she was interested in, and wanted to create some interesting reading.
WELL.....I have a "Question of the Day" for you.......
Have you had a dream about Fort? Since January?
Sadly, I have not. But a few people have told me they have, and have shared them with me. I REALLY need that now.
Donny has had two dreams about her. Woke up in the middle of the night, right after the dream, to tell me. In both dreams, he really felt like she was THERE.
While I have not had a dream about Melissa, I did have an interesting dream that I'm pretty sure was her. Before I tell you about the dream, I should first tell you that the day before I left, another good friend & I had been talking about dreams. She bought a book about DREAMS for me. I read a little, and found out about LUCID dreams, dreams in which you KNOW you are dreaming...so - my dream... I was at Cumberland with my good friend Shelly celebrating her 50th birthday. When the party started the first night, I just couldn't get into the celebration. I excused myself with "I'm just going to lay down for a little bit", with no intention of getting up for the partying later. In the dream, I there were two deer grazing on a hillside. That's it. I remember in my dream thinking "what is the significance of this? WHY am I dreaming about two deer? THAT'S it. I don't remember dreaming anything else. Needless to say, I never said anything to anyone about this "insignificant" dream. Fast forward
to the ride home. I was in a van with 3 women that I really didn't know. We didn't talk much about Melissa during the weekend, although they all knew the story. On the way home, someone asked about her, and of course I took the opportunity (having a captive audience that COULDN"T get away unless they jumped out of a moving vehicle) to tell Melissa's story. I cried for the rest of the 3 hour trip home. At one point, I was talking and staring out the window - and on the side of the road, EXACTLY like in my dream, were TWO DEER GRAZING ON A HILLSIDE! Standing in the same spot, EXACTLY like in my dream. That's it. Nothing else. It really didn't hit me until later. Really until I got home and told Donny. Was it Melissa sending me a message..."you're not ready to see me mom, but I'm here?" I hope so. I BELIEVE so.
Has anyone had dreams about a lost loved one that seemed REAL? I especially want to know dreams about Melissa.
I'm sure you all think I've gone a little batty...just need some Fort stories right now. I'll take ANY interesting dreams right now...
Fort was always interested in her dreams too - always analyzed her dreams. She would get online to find out what they meant. One dream in particular she was swimming and sharks were circling her, but she said "I wasn't afraid mom". This was just a few months before she passed away. I don't know if she posted about it, but I'm sure I got it in an email from her. If I can find it, I'll post it later.
Enjoy the holidays. And the snow if you get it...we are.
(**NOTE- If you don't want to respond about dreams here, you can email me at
pfort@erinet.com)