One of the comments on my post from last Monday got to me. It stuck in my brain and will rattle around in there until I write about it.
She said that a woman in her grief group had a mantra she'd repeat to herself over and over again. Her mantra was "My husband died. I didn't".
Yesterday, somebody who means a great deal to me reminded me that my life isn't over. I have a long life ahead of me. When I heard it, I realized that I hadn't been letting myself believe it fully.
Logically, I can see that my chances of living to old age are good and there's no evidence to support the idea that I'll be kicking the bucket any time soon. I'm still young and healthy. There's also no evidence to support the chance that I'll spend the rest of my life alone. Not that it couldn't happen, just that it's not likely.
Somehow, though, in my heart, I'd felt as though the chance for happiness and love and even a family of my own was taken away from me on June 4, 2011. I'm afraid to hope sometimes. Occasionally, I worry that an essential part of me died on that terrible day and that without that part of me, I'm only a shell of a human being.
But, I didn't die. And my dreams and hopes for the rest of my life shouldn't die either. Maybe a part of me did die on that day, but the essential me is still here. Battered and heartbroken, but still here and still insisting on living.
I think I've been chanting that mantra in my soul all along. It's been a battle cry sometimes, a weak whimper other times, but it's been there. It's kept me afloat all these months and it will continue to.
In two days, I'll be boarding a plane to be with other people who have been living that mantra with me. Whether they believe it all the time or not, they exemplify it to me. They are living. We are living. Maybe even living a little extra for our precious loved ones who didn't get to.
I can't wait to be surrounded by them.
