the will

It doesn't matter how hard any of this is.

I shouldn't say it doesn't matter, because it does. It's going to be important later on when I look back and think about the things I've gone through and overcome. There is a lot of significance in this time, but what I should say is that's not what I should be focusing on. I should be focusing on where I am and why I'm here. It is definitely remarkable and hard to believe that I'm in India. India was hardly on my radar of places to visit until I met Meghan, and even then I tried to talk her out of it. I just wasn't really interested. I get it though. I get why India was so important to her. Meghan always sought challenges and India is certainly full of them. She wanted to experience as much as possible and India is vastly different end to end. Camels, wild peacocks, antelope and elephants all in the same day. It's amazing how old the tombs and temples and culture and customs are. They've remained largely unchanged for the last 500 years. She would love hanging out with the old men in the chai stalls (I should clarify, she would've loved it for the first ten seconds of sitting there and then would've quickly been fed up with the old men blatantly staring and asking which country) or sharing a meal with villagers on a blanket after dark in the desert under the stars (guaranteed more shooting stars than you can count) or wandering through the endless maze of tiny alleys in Jaisalmer. These are experiences that few get to be part of and she would have loved that they were hers. They are hers.

It will be six months that she's been gone this Wednesday, as of few days ago I didn't think I was at all prepared for it. I know six months is a completely arbitrary mile-marker, but it exists and it exists to remind me that I'm alone. That she isn't here anymore. I didn't think I could handle it. I might not be able to. But so far, I am doing IT. That's the point. I am in the middle of it, still surviving and coping and carrying on. I am still here.

Meghan would be so proud and overcome at all that has happened in the past months. Things have progressed beyond what either of us ever expected. She would be so happy with the current place and the path for the future. We do have big plans for all of this. This doesn't just end with me. My goal is to make myself obsolete and have this entity carry on as its own, spurring others to live in Meghan's legacy, reflecting on all that she has to offer and all the of the strength she made so clearly visible for us to see. She is, in every way, extraordinary. Thanks to her I know how to let myself be upset, to grieve, to evaluate everything, then pick myself up and trudge through the mire life so often carelessly distributes to those that hardly ever deserve it.

We are amazing in that we possess will. We have the ability to see the impossible for what it is and overcome with sometimes nothing more than our determination. I watched Meghan do it countless times and on a regular basis. Overcoming provided fulfillment for her, like one would expect, but not like the journey to get there. Those individual steps were her triumph, the bumps along the way that she wouldn't let slow her down. It didn't matter how imposing those roadblocks were. The struggle is what held the significance.

She didn't let life pass her by. She allowed herself to relax and enjoy tiny moments that others hurried to get through. The small stuff holds the significance. The good, the bad. The heavy and the light. Where you are and why you're there is significant. Drinking coffee with a loved one is significant, not the stupid fight you have that keeps you from talking. Drinking chai in a sandstone hut has weight. Riding the slow bus to the beach has weight. Going to a hockey game with your family and best friends has weight. Not the final score, not the cost of the ticket, not the chai itself. Its the up and the down, the happy and the sad, the pieces that make up the whole that are important.