My first entry. I've promised myself to write often. A place holder for all these thoughts and feelings. I have secretly lured in the corners of others thoughts on this site during my journey to surgery - to the other side of fat (hopefully). What a gift that sharing has been.

Tomorrow we are burying my best friend (of 22 years) ex-wife (who was also a friend and the mother of two children I watched grow up). She was fat too. Fat and sick. I'm lucky because right now I'm only fat. Well, fat and injured. Tomorrow won't be easy. Sometimes pain is tangible.

A week ago, I sat in the hospital until 2:30 in the morning. I held her children as they laid on her dead body and cried over and over "I want my mom back." It doesn't matter that they are 22 & 26; they are children and no one ever loves us the way our mothers do. I watched my friend swallow his grief and honor his children in a way so few men do. I was and remain humbled by his love.

Tomorrow I start the required three day fast. I haven't gone shopping yet for supplies. I haven't finished the laundry or cleaning my house. I haven't written my will just in case something happens and I feel a tad overwhelmed and a lot afraid of the biggest looming question . . . am I am strong enough to do all of this? We minimize ourselves with such ease.

All I can do is step back and look at the year journey to right here and now. All I can do is know that Monday morning at 5:30 a.m. I will be in a hospital gown or as a dear child I know calls it, "a sick gown". Why do they have to be so ugly? :thumbup: I will be waiting for the beginning of the second half of my life. Maybe this half will be as a thinner person. Will that be different from the first half? Time truly does tell all.

I am praying a lot this week - not for me but, for life and for the healing of a lot of people - mostly those motherless children whose age is irrelevant.

Namaste.