Date Nights with Grant
Dear Grant,
These 4 years since you died have been tough on me. I’ve been really angry at you and mostly for leaving. I’ve felt betrayed and abandoned by you, so I’ve pushed you away. Forgive me, I want to remember the good times.
It’s what I need now to heal my heart and I want to. I loved you and because I still do, for both of us, I want to remember the beautiful things of our life, so this is for you honey. My all time favorite activity was our date night every week; Tuesday night 4-9 pm, just you ‘n me (unless we had a nursing baby).
We started an intentional weekly date night in 2014. It was our time, no phones, no distractions. It was a time to connect and be us. What we created was time to remember why we fell in love and to recreate that every week. That time rejuvenated me and our relationship and carried us through every weekday with happiness.
Date night ended in 2019 when Grant died and my world changed forever. From 2014 to 2019 there were 260 weeks in what would be the last 5 years of life we had together. And in those only 5 years we had left, we went on over 200 dates.
Some were fun and full of adventures. Sometimes we traveled to beautiful places and ate exotic food, mostly we spent time together close to home just talking. What I remember now that it’s gone is that it was there.
One of the things I love so much about it now is how it was a time I could rely on to have you all to myself. It gave us the space to talk through things that needed to be addressed. You listened so deeply. I listened so deeply. We laughed and cried and sometimes got salty.
We talked through it and always kissed at the end. Thankyou for being the man of my dreams in this life. You were the best husband a girl could ask for. In those last 5 years of your life, I don’t regret one single night we went out.
I think I would regret every single time I put it off for later though, if I had said, “oh I’m so busy, let’s do it next week,” one too many times. I would have missed a beautiful moment I will now never have a chance to make up for.
As life does, there came a time when there wasn’t a next week any more. When that time came, all the dates we had had were all the dates we’d ever have. That was our reflection of how well we prioritized one another when we had the time to.
Neither of us regretted taking the time we had to be together and go on those dates. Don’t keep putting off date nights because you're busy. It was the best way we could have spent those last years together. There comes a time when busy ends, and so does opportunity.