My Name is Kris and I Blah-g

I am a gluton for punishment! Perhaps it was Mother’s Day yesterday. Maybe it was the Danny Gokey concert last week. I dunno. I think about Mike daily and usually it’s just remembering his face. Or the look in his eye….or something. It’s usually not “painful”…at least it’s not anymore. Those days during the first year? Yeah. That was tough.

Today was a little different.

Recently, I discovered that my huge data storage drive was failing. For the past week I have been trying to recover precious files – basically pictures from Michaela’s birth to about January 2009 – anything that was on Mike’s computer, all of his music, his writings, everything…our tax returns. You name it. It was on this storage drive and last week I couldn’t access it. I took it to a local place and they were unable to recover anything. Finally I caved in and sent the drive to a data recovery place and today learned that IF they can do a full recovery, it will cost me $2400. The drive is in apparently pretty bad shape so today I have been dealing with these feelings that were spilling over from the weekend of just missing Mike to despair in wondering if I was losing some precious memories because I was too stupid to not back it up with redundant drives.

It begs the question…how do you put a price on your memories? As choked up about the cost I will incur in trying to salvage anything from this, I was frantically searching today for any pictures that could have been on that drive but I miraculously found elsewhere. I am happy to say that I did find some. And when I did, I was compelled to put them together in a video. The video below is a tough watch. It features the song “I Will Not Say Goodbye” by Danny Gokey – a song that he introduced the other night as the song that was written for his late wife, Sophia. This is the song that I asked him about.