Bad Days

On good days everything seems OK.  You let your guard down.  You smile, you laugh without being self conscious, you allow yourself to experience joy; and it all feels great.  Until it doesn't.  Until you have a bad day - a day when the sheer frustration of trying to get something done makes you want to to scream, when pain makes you want to crawl into bed and hide, when every crazy crawls out if the woodwork with selfish demands,when the fucking random unfairness of life reminds you that you are nothing and your life means nothing.

Those days hurt.  Not like a pounding headache, or a bleeding wound, or a blistering burn - they hurt like an acid eating away at the very core if your being.  They wipe away your confidence, your self-worth, your reason to fight.  They strip away your purpose, question your ability to trust, take away your hope and leave you naked and defenseless in a hostile world you thought you left behind.

And you see it happening, but you're not strong enough to stop it.  So you question everything, you become passive-agressive, and you hate yourself for it.  And you just want someone to make it OK again, but nobody can.

So you medicate away the pain, and you hide the self-doubt behind a pretty shade of lipstick, and you know that if you just bear it for a few days everything will start to feel OK again.  And maybe the next really bad day will take a little longer to arrive.

Rhythm and Flow

When you're in a real partnership, like I had with Brian, life takes on a rhythm and flow.  You wake up together; you go to sleep together; and in between you do a million things together - a million ordinary little things together.

So when that partnership is cut short, everything changes.  Nothing is familiar or comfortable anymore.  Everything becomes difficult, frightening, and overwhelming.

I'm overwhelmed, and I hate myself for it because it feels like weakness.  No matter how many people tell me otherwise, it feels like failure because life has no familiar rhythem.  The flow is gone and I feel like I'm being bounced around from challenge to challenge, problem to problem, failure to failure.

I know that it will get better - it already has, but life is hard right now.  I'm so tired of having to work so hard just to make it through each day.

I feel happiness and joy.  I laugh.  I love.  But I miss the comfort of my old life, and the feeling of certainty that in my partnership with Brian everything would be OK.

I'm Alive

Grief never goes away.  Mourning never ends.  Life goes on, and a new normal starts to feel OK.  Joy comes back in starts and fits. Laughter becomes real again.  Happiness becomes imaginable, and hope returns.

But the sadness remains. Some days it descends like a thick fog, and while hope is still there it is hidden behind the clouds of grief.

Others can't understand.  How can I  be OK one day, and fall part the next.  I am.  Its a scary ride.  It is difficult to enjoy the ups when you know that the pain can jump up and strangle you at any time.  The suffocating grip around the neck that tries to convince you that you're already dead.  We are crazy.  Schizophrenic at worst.  Moody at best.

This is life - not the fairytale we thought we were living.  This is life - wonderful, horrible, joyful, tearful, amazing and terrifying.

Loss is a hard lesson.  It takes a lifetime to learn.

I'm OK.  I'm not OK.  I'm alive.  That has to be enough.  I am able to feel happy again, but that doesn't erase the pain.  They coexist - the ying and yang in my heart and my mind.

I'm alive.

DEATH IS UNFAIR

My husband was diagnosed a few weeks after his 48th birthday.  He died three and a half months later.

His brother, Bill, died of alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency when he was just 36.  

His sister Connie died in her young fifties.  She lived with her cancer for 15 years.  Lived on chemotherapy for 15 years.  She didn't let it define her; she held the bastard back and lived until......

Death isn't fair.  Five siblings.  One gone in his 30s, another in his 40s, the third in her 50s.

If there is any lesson here at all, it is to live.  Just live.  Be good.  Be loved.  Love.  And live.

Moving Forward

I miss him so much.  Things change, and it hurts.  I don't remember the feeling I used to have when I came home - that happy skip of my heart to walk through the door and see the love of my life smiling at me.  I hate that I'm forgetting.  I hate that my brain can adjust to life without Brian.

I don't automatically turn to him for help when a task seems to daunting, when there is a spider in the bathtub, when I"m tired and hurting and want to feel his loving arms around me.  The pain now isn't realizing that he"s not there when I turn for him.  The pain is in the realization that I know he's not here, and I no longer turn for his help or his comfort.  That is so hard.  I don't want to forget all those little things.  I don't want to move forward without him.

Fate can be cruel.  I really feel like I've had more than I could take - but here I am, alive, breathing, living,  moving on.  Creating a life.  Actively deciding to continue to live without him,  To look for happiness.  To share all of the love that he shared for me.

I realize that in many ways I am closer to his nieces and nephews than to my own family.  I have chosen to love the people he loved, to make his chosen family my chosen family.  To love and nurture them like my own nieces and nephews - like my own kids.

So, it seems that the only thing I can do is take the lessons I've learned from the deceit and pain of my first marriage, and the total, unconditional love of my second marriage and share that with the people that Brian and I love so much.  To nurture them, and let them nurture me.

I have to move forwards, but I have so many gifts from Brian to take with me and share.

I miss you so much, Brian.  It still is a searing raw pain.  But I don't feel it every minute of every day.  More and more I feel you in me.  You were the most beautiful person I've ever met.  Loving you has made me so much more beautiful.  You're not in my arms, but you are my heart.  You are the best part of me - my compassion, my ability to love, my wicked humor.  I am better for being loved by you.  You live on because you are in me.

You saved me, even if you would never admit it.  I won't waste that gift.  I'll live.  I'll love.  I'll try to be the best of you.