I don’t read newspapers anymore for the same reason I don’t watch the news: there are just too many devastating stories out there about how cruel people are to one another. I make it a point to check in on some news sites in the morning to get the information that I deem important and ignore all other headings. But on Monday, our cleaning lady was here and she had the TV going in the den, and as I was passing through, I stopped in my tracks when the newscaster started speaking of a home invasion gone horribly, horribly wrong, in Connecticut. I wanted to turn off the TV but I could not. And now, well now I am so sorry that I didn’t just grab the remote and shut the damn thing off. This story is more than I can bare to hear and now it’s stuck in my head and in the early morning hours when I am sitting in my baby’s nursery and feeding her, it’s on my mind, front and center. A husband, made a widower. His two beautiful daughters gone, as well. The cruelty of the crime is staggering, and it has me thinking about my own girls and how much it means to me to be here, on earth, in their lives. Of course, I never want to leave them. But I know that’s out of my hands. But it means that I must make provisions for them, if anything should happen to myself or my husband.

We’ve been working on our wills for some time now, but were kind of stalled for the last couple of months. I think that it’s my fault. There are changes I want made to the will and I was afraid of offending my husband, of hurting his feelings. No more. It is time to make this thing official and so I sent him that email (I’m still a chicken!) with my requested changes. I just need to know that if anything were to happen to either one of us that my girls, our girls, are taken care of in the manner in which we’ve been taking care of them. It’s so important to me, everything from the importance of travel (a MUST, in my book) to their education (totally up to them; my parents forced my hand when it came to going to college and it was a disaster), to the mundane things like how much money they get from our estate and when.

It’s a boring topic, and yet it’s totally fraught with angst for me. And it’s one of the hardest decisions, at least for me, I’ve ever had to make – who is up to the task of taking care of my children if I’m not able? And in my opinion, no one is up to snuff, and yet I know that’s not actually the case. Of course there are people in our lives who are able to raise them for us. Maybe not to my exacting standards, but yes, they are capable. But I just can’t let go of that thought that it will be different. Their entire lives will be different, and I realize that is the part that is making it near impossible for me to choose a guardian. I cannot bare, cannot fathom the thought of not being here on earth, with my little family.