It's still hard to believe that Kim is gone. I did house work all day today and thought about her throughout much of the day. I'd be thinking about her and then get distracted with something else for a while and then it would just hit me again. I have to keep reminding myself that she's gone. There were even a few times when I thought about taking a break and checking my email to see if I might have heard from her and then the reality that she's gone would sink in again and I'd get choked up and think about how much I am going to miss hearing from her and how hard it is to believe and accept this. That's really it in a nutshell. I just can't believe that she's gone. She was so vibrant and full of life and had become a constant presence in mine, obviously not in the flesh, but we had our little routine down, as silly as that may sound, and I'd grown to depend on and look forward to those emails and phone calls, and whatever it was that that she had to say. I'm still struggling to accept that I will never get another email or phone call, or spend another weekend staying up all night talking non-stop. She was too young to die! The only peace I can find is knowing that she's been forever reunited with her mother in a beautiful palace in the sky but it still hurts. I've also been thinking about Paul and wondering how he's holding up. I can't imagine how difficult this is for him and how much he misses her.

I stayed up late last night and read through some of our email exchanges. I think I still have 95% of them, if not all of them. I'd created a Kim folder a while back because we were emailing so often that I might not always have a chance to reply immediately but would often try to go back later to reread and "rainbow reply" and it was easier to keep up with them that way. Luckily, the ones that I'd deleted were still in my deleted folder. It was comforting to read back through them. Many of them made me sad, such as the ones in which she described the pain of losing her mom. Many made me laugh. She had a great personality and we were so often on the same page.

I also started a new entry last night focusing more on Kim the person and the things I'd learned about her this past year. I'm still working on it but hope to have a chance to finish it up tomorrow. Between interruptions from the family and the fact that I'm reading through our old emails as I am writing it, it's just taking some time to get it together.

Well, I'm off to try and catch some zzz's now and to hopefully forget for a while that this is real.

Thank you for all of the kind comments.