Sorry for the long break...

Can't believe I haven't posted anything since January. Not that I haven't come across anything hideous since January, just been busy with life and stuff.

After lots and lots of trying we're finally expecting our first baby, due in Early December. We're extremely excited, scared, nervous and every other emotion first time parents go through.

I heard some sad news today, my first step-mother, Kris, passed away. We don't know any of the details, only minimal information was in the obituary today with a full obituary being printed in Monday's paper. My dad was married to her for over 10 years and I have a lot of happy memories of childhood times with Kris and her family. Unfortunately when their marriage ended I didn't pursue the relationship, maybe I felt I needed to be supportive of my dad rather than maintain a relationship with her? Of course he would have been fine with me having a relationship with her, I don't have any logical explanation as to why I let the contact dwindle to nothing. Her passing has brought up a lot of sadness for my dad and me. You always feel that there will be time to say sorry, to reunite, to catch up over the last 16 years but then the opportunity is gone. My dad feels guilty since he was the one to ultimately pull the plug on their marriage (even though there were issues for both of them). Right now we don't know if it is appropriate to attend the services or if it would be more respectful to her family if we didn't attend. Right now we're going to wait and see, I know how to contact her brother-in-law, we may end up asking him if it would be acceptable to her family for us to attend. The last thing we want to do is infringe on their grief...yet we'd like the chance to say goodbye.

It was hard on Kris to be a step-parent. She was unable to have children of her own and sometimes she fully accepted me as "her" child but other times it seemed like it was bittersweet for her to parent me. She tried hard and most of the time things were good. As I've grown up and gone through my own trials of infertility, I can understand what she went through and I know now that she was in a tough position.

I loved her, I hope she found it in her heart to forgive me for not maintaining our relationship and I hope she forgave my dad for their marriage struggles.