Eric Benner

July 6th....the damn 6th....

22 years ago tonight, in a different town, in a differently life, we were celebrating our wedding.  We went to our hotel room to be greeted by a bottle of champagne and a note, from the couple next door, I believe.  If I remember correctly, we had the Captain’s Suite, the one THEY tried to reserve.  However, they were just filled with joy and love for US.  They were celebrating their anniversary, I am sad I don‘t remember which one, but they were older (ha - likely a few years older than me right now) and I feel that the anniversary was one of significance.  For them, they just wanted to share in the celebration and send us a gift for our wedding night.  They wished us a lifetime of happiness and it was all just so incredibly sweet.  It’s tonight that I remember that....something I have not thought about in decades.  

Today was a good day, spent celebrating a friend’s birthday in Napa.  Someone you have never met.  Someone who only knows you by name.  It is so damn surreal to walk in memories of the past, while living in the prevent, somehow not quite believing both could exiist in this lifetime. In my lifetime.  

Tonight, I am at a loss for words.  Heavy in thought, thanks to the memories that randomly flooded as I got ready for bed and the chaos in my heart. Thinking of the past, regrets, wishes, dreams.  I never thought you would not be here 22 years ago when we said our vows.  I know you didn’t either.  Sometimes, the unthinkable happens, and we have to pick up the pieces. I will forever be finding shards of the shrapnel your death created, picking them up and carrying them forward.  For myself.  For our family.  For our friends.  

I may live an entirely different life now, one we never could have scripted.  While I certainly would not have chosen this path, I am forever grateful it appeared when the road I knew was my life‘s journey was obliterated.  I still wish you knew the me of today.  I wish you watched the beauty of our amazing babies become adults.  I wish you were here to simply be YOU for all those that loved you.  I sure hope you’re watching some of it.  I hope you are thankful for those that stepped up, when you left, and for those that stayed, when you couldn’t.  

The 6th....day our life began, the day your life ended. 15 years, 5 months to the day.  

E....

I have had a LOT of reminiscing about you lately.  Running into colleagues of yours who I haven’t seen in years or whom I have heard of, but never met.  There has just been a lot of you.  Your memory.  Emotions with the kids.  Roller coasters of work-life balance...or lack there of.  I don’t know why, but I just needed to reach out.  Write a bit.  Send a cosmic hug.

Wen 

 Despite all the news reports, celebrity deaths and painful reminders that yours was not an isolated incident, when someone close has heartache that even flashes similarities to yours, an internal panic commences and an absolute NEED to cure overtakes.  None of this is logical, yet it is more emotionally charged than I can describe.  I want a solution.  I want this horrific disease, or any precursors to it, eradicated.  I don’t want another person to lose their sense of self, their feelings of self worth and value called into question.  I want LOVE to be enough.  

What I want doesn’t matter and it doesn’t solve anything, and yet I desperately want to help those I know, and those I don’t, that somehow have come to feel like you did.  I just want you to know that your impact has caused ripples that last still.  

Watch over us, send some faith and I pray that those who are floating on an island find something to ease their anguish.  

RIP EHB


PS - Losing Kathy Lightell to her horrific disease of cancer has caused many who loved you to reach out....another good one gone way too soon.  I like to think that you welcomed her with a big fat hug, with Kerry Sr. standing along side.  Imaginary heaven?   Maybe, but I will take it.


 

I know it has been a very long time since I have written on this page.  It's not that I haven't thought about it, repeadly actually, however the truth is that a very busy life has seemed to get in the way.  On one hand, that is a good thing, because the daily pace of normalcy is a gift that I never fully realized before you became ill.  On the other, I like staying connected to you on this site.  Weird, I know, but it's my weird reality and I embrace it fully.  

This morning, another facebook reminder flashed before my eyes. You weren't in the photo, which isn't surprising, nor the point.  Any photo from back then provides a gut check.  A picture reminder of what I believed were the worst of times and another reminder of how naive I was to think that would be our hardest days.  I wasn't on facebook when the kids were little (I'm old enough that it didn't even exist), but those photos would at least be bittersweet.  Those photos were authentic and genuine and real, or so I choose to believe.  Those were the you I knew, the you I understood and the life I knew as true.  The ones that facebook flashbacks to are from six to eight years ago and those just look empty.  That is what makes me the most sad....how we saw, but clearly never knew, what was right there in front of us.  I am not alone in this...I know that others with loss like ours have similar thoughts, similar mysteries, but I also know that we have lived it and so it simply affects us more deeply.

Anyway, I just wanted to take a moment and connect to your memory through my writing.  I pray, as I always do, that you are at peace.  I hope that you have an eternity filled with it and that somehow you can watch over our three children with the pride that I know you felt in having been their father.  They are awesome and I am forever grateful to be their mom.  I am also thankful for the love of our family, our fr-amily and those that have become our "people" because they help provide the foundation of their roots.

RIP EHB....RIP with love

This morning, as I was texting the girls about our day and drinking coffee, I clicked on good ole Facebook and wham...a gut punch.  Like a full on sucker punch.  I know those reminders are often bittersweet, with our babies actually kind of resembling babies and all, but today...nope.  Today was a photo from six years ago.  A photo from a night I remember....partially well, partially not.  It was a night we were going to the OMNI Poker Tournament.  A few months before your death.  When things were horrific, but somehow I thought they would still get better.

I look at the picture and see so many things.  The first thing I notice is how plastic I look.  Stiff.  Thin (which selfishly and vainly I actually really like.....ugh). And then I look at you.  I search for something.  I see your attempt at a half smile.  You look hallow.  You look gone.  In my mind, you unequivocally did not want to go that night, but I actually think I might be off on that....my memories get mashed up and there are far more pressing memories of the week before your death and the horrific attempts to act normally at "Holiday" Parites.  On this night, because it was Poker, I think you were ok with it. Maybe resigned is a better word.  I don't know and I question most of my memories from this time.  What's funny, or maybe ironic, is that night I did not want to play.  But I did....for the first time ever, I might add, and I won the whole tournament.  That would normally be a big thing for my competitive self, and I think it kind of was, but nothing about that lovely picture represents a "win".  

Everything I see in that picture is loss.  
Loss of self....your illness broke me.  I was so busy trying to fix everything I could not see it.  You could.  I was not myself.  I was like a whirling dervish on hyperspeed trying to do everything for everyone, likely failing miserably, and desperately trying to run-away, with no where to go.
Loss of you.....if your illness broke me, it obliterated you.  Broken things heal.  Often stronger.  You were blown to bits.  And you and I and the doctors were littlerally picking up fragments, not that we knew it at the time.  You were so good at making the fragments look like large, fixable pieces that simply needed some glue we hadn't discovered yet.  
Loss of the life we created.  Everything we knew was inexplicably altered.  
Loss of health.  
Loss before death.  

Harsh words, but my reality.  Thanks Facebook for the reminder.  It's not that I don't carry that with me every single day;  all of us do.  But, to see it, in a picture, right in front of me....ugh.  RIP, EHB....forever loved.