"Until my dying day..."

"...until my last breath."  My wife Megan and I had those words tattooed onto our forearms on February 8th, 2014.  It was my suggestion, and she was completely taken aback by it.  Not because she wasn't sold on the idea of a little ink (she had sixteen tattoos already), but because I suggested it and came up with the whole plan.  I only had two tattoos at the time, so it wasn't my "thing", and she found it one of the most romantic gestures I had ever made.  Yeah, we were weird like that.  

Megan and her younger brother were born with Cystic Fibrosis.  I won't get into the details of it, but in summary, the symptoms are effectively like having permanent pneumonia.  Look it up if you're interested, but prepare to be depressed at what some people have to go through just to live.  Her brother Jason only made it to age 19.  I was at his bedside with Megan in 2005 when he passed.  I was 24 years old.  That is the very moment that I knew that I would be seeing this scene play out again, probably before I turned 40 years old, but it would be my wife lying in that bed.  Four days after her brother died, Megan and I were married, in the same church where Jason's funeral was to be conducted the next day.

Talk about sobering.  She was sick before I even met her in 2002, just after being honorably discharged from the Marine Corps.  She was sick when I proposed to her, at the hospital, no less, in 2004.  She was sick when we married, and she was sick in 2007, when our daughter Shelby was born.  She was sick until 2011, when she received a double lung transplant, and we finally got three healthy years where we maximized every moment we had, not worrying about when her time would come, but knowing in the back of our minds that it would come entirely too early.  She wasn't sick again until January 2014, when the "pop" was felt when we were at Crossfit together.  That "pop" was the first sign of those recycled lungs beginning to be rejected by her immune system.

On November 19th, 2014, at age 33, Megan took her last breath.  I held her hand and watched as her heart rate went from 90 beats per minute to 3, then zero.  The tattoo, after spending less than a year on her body, had just taken on its true meaning. 

So here I am, writing about my dead wife on the internet.  At age 34, with an eight year old daughter, I'm a widower.  I was gifted 12 years with an amazing woman.  My perspective is somewhat unique, because after the initial shock of losing her, I came to the realization that I don't feel "cheated" like many other widow(er)s justifiably do.  I made a deal with the devil, because I loved Megan "in sickness and in health, until death do us part.  There wasn't any fine print on that contract.  It was all there in big capital letters: IF YOU MARRY HER, SHE WILL BE DEAD BEFORE YOU'RE 40.  

I simply refuse to let something that I knew and accepted would happen someday destroy my life.  It's not too bad.  It's too soon.  Of course, I wanted more time with her, and would have sacrificed anything to grow old with her and never have to be here, where I am, right now.  She would have never let me do that though.  She was guiding me long before she died, and she's still doing it now.  I can't help but think that she actually lived, and gave her life, for Shelby and I, and I am eternally grateful.   

Did her death change my life?  Obviously, but it did not destroy me.  I still get mood swings or bad days like everyone else, full of rage and hate and pain and fear of self, but generally those days are followed by ambition and an intense need to scream out that I will not let life take me down.  Those bad days are the ones that let me know that I'm human, so I wipe the snot off of my face, get the hell off of the couch, and get shit done.  Feeling sorry for myself accomplishes nothing.  When that switch flips from suffering to determination, it is simply not possible to feel more powerful.     

All of my strength and love and fire went into Megan, involuntarily, for 12 years, and now that she's gone, I've got one hell of a surplus outside of Shelby.  I'm still trying to figure out what to do with it all, but I've got a pretty good idea that it shouldn't be left to collect dust.  The odd part, and the part I've still got to figure out, is that I don't get to just decide where that all of that fire gets applied.  She's somewhere, still stoking and handing out those flames to whomever she sees fit, and I have no choice in the matter but to awkwardly accept it.

Her smart-ass personality (and her brother's) will find it hilarious to watch me flounder around, but I know she only wants what right for Shelby and I.  I'm falling down life's staircase, and she's at the top, laughing her ass off at my misfortune as always, but still helping me crawl back up by bringing people and events into my life that even I don't understand yet.

Breathe easy babe.

Getting My Feet Wet

My kitties back in 2011 checking out the new kayak.

I'm struggling tonight. A mix of emotions are coursing through my veins… as is always the case with anything new on this journey. Why does every single new thing have to pull at my gut with uneasiness for the fact that he is not here? *sigh*

Today my Crossfit class had a water workout at the lake. Swimming, kayaking, lots of hard work and fun. We had about 10 or 15 people come out and spend the entire day out at the lake after our workout. I met some new people, and got to knew a few people from my class a bit more. And for one Saturday afternoon I pretty much just hung around being a normal 31 year old chick… which was nice. But since coming home I've been all kinds of emotional. Why? Well, I did something huge today. I took our kayaks out to the event for everyone to use.

The reason it's so huge is because our kayaks have been in storage since he died. Mine in fact had never even been used - as he has bought it for me for my birthday the fall before he died and we hadn't yet had a chance to take them out together. So today was actually the first time that I used the kayak he bought me. And I had to do this without him. Ouch.

I suppose fortunately, I was having enough fun to not think about it too deeply while there. But the undercurrent of emotions was riding below the surface all day. And as the night is coming to an end and I am curling up in bed alone again, it's all coming up.

He should have been next to me the first time that I used that kayak. Next to me, at the lake in Dallas where we always camped. The lake where we took our first kayak lesson together. I can still remember all of that like it was yesterday sometimes. (God, how is this my reality?)

Still, it was wonderful to share our kayaks with others and have a part of our life be a part of my new life and new events in it. To know that someone else sat in his kayak for the first time today. And someone else put on his life jacket today for the first time. I don't even quite know who that first person was, since we had so many people there. All I know is that it wast him. And of course since these are not close friends, not a single person there had any clue that all of this was going on underneath my cool, easy smile and bright laughter through the day.

I'm physically exhausted, from the workout, but I'm so much more emotionally exhausted. It was a huge step to finally take those kayaks out. Because it isn't just about a couple of water toys, it's about being able to accept in one more small way that he isn't coming back. And about feeling ready to let go of that one small piece of pain and try to share that part of my life with new people in order to give it new life. It isn't easy. And it hurts like hell. But today, I did it, and I'm proud of myself.

Seeing all the fun everyone had did bring me new joy. It made my heart feel good to share. And to be driving the kayaks there strapped down in the bed of his truck, a reminder that he is still so much a part of everything I do. Not the same way as he was. And certainly not in the way that I want him to be. But at least in some way, he is still here.