Widowed at thirty six. WOW! I wonder if people shake their heads and whisper after they've seen me. Whisper about what happened. Or worse, whisper about what they heard from someone who heard from someone who heard what they think happened. Always whispering, in a secret unknown hope that their life would never take such a turn... Life became a permanent "by any means necessary" situation for me sixty nine days ago. I find it laughable that I decided to start my first blog post ever at 1:05 a.m. sixty nine days after the great love of my life left this earth. That's his way of telling me to do this. He had quite the sense of humor, that one. We'll get into that later though, this is not the time. After three days in the hospital and zero days notice, my husband of eleven years and best friend of seventeen was gone. In what felt like a flash in time, not even a second, my son was out a Father before he was out of braces. With the nod of my head I was forced to concede. To let them know it was okay to quit. Reneging on everything my husband stood for. My man was many things, but a quitter he was not. In that instant all choice was removed and I was left with only the responsibility to tell them to stop. Forever casting an unrelenting shadow over my son's life and my own. I had watched so many of them them try so hard for so long. Coming from a medical family, I knew that it was no longer my choice. Josh had made it very clear that he would never want to live any kind of way that would have kept him here the way he was. In that instant I surrendered any shred of hope that my family would ever be what I always knew we would be. Together forever.
It's not as if we weren't severely fractured already. Our wild wolf pack of friends who are so intertwined it's more like a giant beautiful family. We run pretty close. There are a lot of us and everyone doesn't get to see everyone all that often, but thirty eight days before Josh passed, another one of our most formidable family members took his leave. My husband's best friend of twenty years was gone. When everyone else was at home getting ready to leave they were always together. At his place, at John's place. Wherever, they were always together. Even when they weren't together. I don't care what the Coroner's report comes back telling me. I KNOW my husband died from a broken heart. I wasn't his first love. Their hearts just beat the same. To say that the two of them together were a formidable force would be more than an understatement. They always said that they would move heaven and earth for each other, and sadly for the rest of the pack, that's just what they did. Strong men, those two. He and John were thick as thieves. They were far from alone though. Thankfully our pack runs as wide as it does strong. My son and I are blessed to have many to hold us up and keep us together. There is nothing so bittersweet as reuniting with long lost deeply loved friends at the funeral of a thirty four year old man. Except for seeing them again a month later at the funeral of your thirty four year old Husband.
Like I said, it's only been sixty nine days. I don't have much experience with all this, but I do know a few things. I know that as those two hearts stopped beating, numerous others were fractured in a way so deep that they will never be the same again. I see it in our children. As I love them and laugh with them, I see that deep solid black pain behind way down deep in their eyes. I see it in my family. In the way they make kind alternative suggestions instead of saying "no". I see it in the movements of our loving pack. Always reaching out to try and mend what cannot be fixed. Their hearts breaking all over again with the recurring realization that this one is beyond their control, no matter how strong they are. I see it in the mirror and I feel it in the deepest part of my soul. When my chest feels to heavy to breath. When I see red because someone cut me off or something gets misplaced. Wanting to rip the Universe wide open one second and feeling to weak to draw another breath the next. There is nothing I could break that is worthy of this pain. No one I could strike out at that would be sufficient. Yet I live constantly looking frantically around for something. Evaluating everything I see. Every situation I find myself in. Just waiting. Waiting for something, ANYTHING, ANYONE, to be enough. But it never will be. I'm smart enough to know that. Nothing can give me what I want. For my son to have a father again. His father. Not some man I meet years from now who's "good enough". I begin to feel like a spool of thread that has just been thrown to the wind, unraveling at a more than unnerving speed.
How do you just keep going? Don't know that one yet. You just do. Time stops for no man, no matter how much they are loved. No matter how much pain and carnage has been left in the wake of this emotional tornado of untold proportion. The County wants money or you won't get water. The power company feels bad, "Sorry about your luck, but if you want power we need money". My son continues to grow. Needing answers that he's to polite to say he doesn't want from me. Advice and guidance that should come from his dad. Just listening to me with that dark pit of pain behind his eyes. Behind the smile and that light tone he takes on. Either as to not worry me, or more likely, just to get me off his back. Loving me to much to tell me to shut up. Praying that I'll be quiet soon because his father is no longer here to tell me enough already as I babble away. Rambling. My brain scrambling for the words. Racing to find the ones that are going to return the light. The words that might make his heart whole again. I know they aren't out there. At least I can't think of any that would help me. Yet I cannot stop. Constantly being haunted by the notion that whatever I am saying, whatever I am doing it isn't enough. Will never be enough because his father's word was bond. Oh how beautifully tragic it is... The notion that Josh loved our son so much he told him every time he laid eyes on him. From my bebe's first day to my husband's last. Determined to build a strong foundation for a lifetime of love, family, and friendship. We were a beautiful trinity and now that has gone. All that remains is two points and a line. I pray that I can keep it from fraying to pieces, but our anchor has been cut loose and the storm of life is unrelenting. The world refusing to yield to our pain. Instead we find ourselves drifting through our days. Me forever worrying that we may be unable to find our way back to the joy and love that we were once unwittingly lucky enough to live in.
"They" say that time heals all wounds. It does not. This hurt, this relentless, crippling pain that no one can fully see will never go away. The best I can hope for is that someday, as time passes, the sharp edged thoughts and memories that cut my soul like broken glass slashing at my heart will dull with age. Becoming a quiet ache that doesn't leave me on the verge of collapse at any given moment. My heart will grow back, but it will beat twisted and different. The rhythm of my heartbeat will never be the same. "They" have said a lot of things over my thirty six years on this planet, and one thing I know for sure from listening to "them" is that I'm not one of 'em. I also know that I have forever lost the one person who has ever seen me. Seen all of me and loved me every second of every day, not in spite of who I really am, but because of it, is dead and it's almost to much to bear. It cannot be to much though, because God doesn't give us more than we can handle. It's part of the deal. I HAVE to believe that. Even when it feels like there's no way I can walk through this. If I didn't force myself to believe that, I wouldn't make it. I also know that, despite how much I feel it, I'm not alone. I know women who have walked this path. I have watched them cry, seeming to fall apart bit by bit, only to reunite with them later and find them smiling and getting on with life. They are happy in their own way. They say they are, and I know they wouldn't lie to me. A pack member would never pull some shit like that.
I've discovered other stuff too. Like the fact that there's a good chance no one will ever know me again. Not like he did. Painful words that I may never have the strength to utter again will rot inside me. Memories that I have forgotten will die, with no one here to say "Remember when...". I have learned that no matter how much you cherish something, it can all be gone in a flash. Your entire future gone. Every thought you gave mind to, every plan you made, every dream you dared to dream, dead in an instant. An entire lifetime ripped away from you by the perfectly dark and twisted storm.
At one point I knew a lot more. I knew that Josh loved our son and I far to much to ever leave us. I was delusional in my comfort that things would always be what they were. I knew that we would grow old together, and that I could convince him to dance just one dance with me on our fiftieth wedding anniversary, just as I had on our wedding day. I knew that he would be here to bring me back when I got to far into my own dark world. Now I know that I must do everything in my power to remember how to find my way out of it long enough to navigate through my days and raise my son. And finally, I know that I am forever grateful that although our time together was way too short, at least it was true. Every last bit of it. Our love was true and real and beautiful. At times it was also sad and hard and ugly. That's how I know it was real.
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