Most of my customers know because they are not just customers, they have become my friends over the last five almost six years of me making and creating, and all of it started with a shirt, sweatshirt, or something custom. I have loved creating and making all of my customers (friends) their products, but honestly, the last 5 - 6 years have also been some of the roughest years of my life, don't get me wrong I have had a lot of good things happen, I got married, I started my business, I met a lot of new people, I started a new full-time job, (Yes, I work full time and make shirts, too!) but in the recent years I've lost a lot of loved ones (which I know everyone has.) I lost my Father in law just months after getting married, thankful he showed up on our honeymoon. (Most would be mad about this but I wasn't I have some of my best memories of him from that.) That was the last vacation my husband had to share with him, that was probably one of the hard losses I've had at that point in my life. Me and my father-in-law lovingly bullied each other, that was his form of love, if he didn't like you he didn't pick on you. It was also a hard time having to see my husband hurt so bad, his dad wasn't just his dad that was his best friend, his go-to, his supporter, his teacher, and many more things a dad can be. Life went on and from that point in my life to now I've averaged to lose someone in my life about every eight months since then so life hasn't been easy, to say the least. On the same day, I lost my father in law, my dad was diagnosed with cancer when the news was given to me I literally just fell to the ground crying, I was so lost at that point, my dad picked me up and held me and said: " don't worry baby I'm going to fight this!" I had to hold on to those words. My dad fussed at my mom for telling me that day, but my mom said "if she would have found out later she would be so mad we kept it from her." (Which she was so right! I am a daddy's baby from day one.) My dad beat his cancer and has had good checkups since then. (Praise report!)
I lost both of my grandparents in one year my grandparents were like my second parents, they spoiled me of course. I went shopping with mawmaw every week as a kid, McRae's (I swear she kept that place in business.) Walmart for groceries and whatever latest Disney movie even if it was just a remake being put on DVD, and head straight home to watch it! Well, until she updated her vehicle where I could watch it on the way home, and to the sale barn with my pawpaw and after the sale begging my parents to just let me go to The Farm. Where I could run, play, and ride the four-wheeler with my pawpaw, play with the cows, help in the garden, drop a line in the many ponds on The Farm, and now I haven't stepped foot there since my pawpaws funeral my reason for going there isn’t there anymore… no more coffee, no more fishing, no more sequence games, me and mawmaw whooping, pawpaw and Jeremy, no more hugs and pink stained cheeks from the hello and goodbye kisses, no more I was just thinking about you calls and I need to pray for you cause you were on my mind and I know somethings wrongs. My grandparents meant the world to me they weren’t just someone I seen on the holidays or every couple months I seen and talked with them weekly, and when my pawpaw was diagnosed with cancer I was the one who had to walk my mawmaw to the truck to go home for the first time in 62 years by herself, she cried out to me “I won’t make it without him, I can’t make it without him.” That was on a Wednesday that following Saturday she went into the hospital and never left, she grieved herself before he was even gone, I swear I felt like I blinked twice and my mawmaw was gone. Just so many things that have changed at this point in my life and even to now. Grief is a horrible thing it’s a dirty cut throat that doesn’t care if you live or die, it doesn’t make you think of others, it makes you selfish and hard to be around. It makes you so unlike yourself you can’t see it and no one around you knows how to tell you your not yourself because more than likely they are going through it too! Grief sucks it breaks another piece of your heart and turns it black, like it has cut off the oxygen to it just slowly killing it. I’m going through it, been going through it and unfortunately I don’t see the end of it. I will make it through it, I have to I have to be strong for my family. I will continue to write about it so I can let it out so there is definitely more to come of my messy life.
- Kim