I still can't believe it

There's been quite a flurry of activity today - lots of emails, notes, posts etc. on facebook - all about the barrier votes. A friend of Henry's started a group specifically to get people to vote for a barrier and I think that and all the pester emails made a big difference. It's so easy to do all this just sitting in front of the computer, isn't it. You send an email to a friend or relative or colleague, explain a bit about the background, pass along several links and ask them to vote and, if you're lucky, they do. And since we won by 11 votes (only), I think that in this case every vote really did count.

Of course, this does not mean it's over. We now have to wait until October (at the earliest) to see what happens next. The Bridge Authority is in no way obligated to listen to the "yes" votes but I think that those, the various petitions, the personal appearances by several survivors at their meetings and the letters written to them should have an impact. And if not, we are that much more organized the next time around.

I am surprised, though, that the total number of votes was only 4,174. Considering all the fuss and negative comments in the newspapers, I expected many more (no) votes.

Of course, all this doesn't do anything to fill the big hole in our lives. I still forget on occasion, I still think, "Oh, I have to tell Henry about this." We celebrated tonight by having "pasta night" - a Henry and I tradition. Larry never was much of a pasta fan, so whenever he was on a business trip, Henry and I would have pasta at least once during that week. :-)

There are so many things that have gone through my mind today: missing Henry, of course; realizing (yet again) that there won't be anymore of those phone calls, "Mom, I have a flat tire." (we got that taken care of.) "Mom, I accidentally set off the car alarm (honk, honk in the background) and I don't know how to turn it off." Neither did I, but we figured it out in the end. Of course, by that time, somebody in the school neighborhood had obviously called the police because by the time we drove off, we passed a police car coming towards us.

Nobody to show me interesting things on the computer, help me when I run (yet again) into problems, nobody sending me links to things I would never have looked for on my own, nobody wiping toothpaste into the towels and accidentally bleaching them, no grandchildren and so many, many other things that come to me in bits and pieces.

But, maybe, by helping to get votes in favor of that barrier we will have done something to help prevent what happened to us from happening to another family. I certainly hope so.

The picture is a bit of an afterthought. It's one of those I found on his memory stick a few months ago. I remember that day: summer 2006, he had just gotten a haircut after having his senior picture taken. He was playing around with a video game that he had hooked up to the TV, trying to line himself up in front of it and take pictures.

So many memories!