I miss you

Love notes from my husband - 'I missed you so much today, I love you too much!'

Sometimes the English language feels so inadequate.  I can’t count the number of times I’ve said ‘I miss him’ in the past 11 months since my husband passed away.  But each time I say it, I find myself thinking that these three words just aren’t enough to fully capture the ache that is tearing at my body, mind and soul.

‘I miss you’ was a common phrase in our relationship.  A term of endearment almost, up there with ‘I love you’.  As our courtship blossomed we quickly grew from two private, independent people, content in our own company, to love-struck sweethearts who felt incomplete when we were apart. 

I recall a couple of months in, when we’d planned on having a night apart to catch up on laundry and sleep.  We text on and off throughout the evening until around 9pm when he finally called and said ‘would it be ok if I came over… I miss you.’ My heart sung – he missed me and I missed him too.  We would say it to each other during the day while at work or when one of us ducked out to get groceries or were off spending time with our friends.  He wrote it on love notes that he left on my bathroom mirror (pictured) and I wrote it back in the notes that I hid in his lunchbox that I lovingly packed him each morning. 

We both had jobs that required occasional overnight travel and the evenings apart were difficult for both of us.  I hated falling asleep without the comfort and security of his steady breathing in bed next to me and often stayed up way too late texting or video-calling him.

One of the few things I remember about the day Dan died was laying in our bed that night, staring at the ceiling with my heart racing and my head spinning.  I was thinking: I miss him when we’re apart for more than 30 minutes – how am I physically going to survive never, ever seeing him again for the entire rest of my life? 

I actually didn’t think it would be possible.  Surely, I would die of a broken heart.  I couldn’t imagine anything more painful than a life without him in it.  And I couldn’t understand how his depression took him from me, when he loved me SO much.  He knew I was hopeless without him, yet the power of his disease was enough to cloud that from his mind.

Now, here I sit, 332 days since I hugged and kissed him goodbye that morning, when he left for work and never came back.  The sadness in my heavy heart hasn’t been enough to make it stop beating, but some days I wish it had.  The physical ache for him is almost magnetic – I feel like I’m being pulled out of my own body with the urge to reach out and touch his face or fall into his arms, almost as if my heart senses that he’s standing two metres in front of me but I just can’t see him.

When I’m having a bad day and try to explain to people what I’m feeling, the words ‘I miss him’ just don’t seem enough.  They sound simplistic, light and easy whereas the grief is suffocating and weighing me down like a dozen wet wooly blankets.

I hate that these three words that captured my love for my husband in such a sweet and affectionate way, now feel like a sentence that I will carry with me until the day I die.  What were romantic lyrics between sweethearts are now forever laced with the pain of his death.

I still, subconsciously, say it to Dan daily. I whisper 'I miss you' to his empty pillow every morning; it’s on my breath as I walk through the busy city streets; I close my eyes and hear it run through my head when I'm sitting with friends, feeling totally alone; I cry it out loud to our empty bedroom as the tears fall each night.

I know from speaking to other widows and reading grief books that the pain will eventually soften as I heal.  But I also know I will never stop missing him.  Part of me doesn’t want to – I want to cling to the pain, because it assures me that our love is still real and he’s not slipping away.  I don’t understand this grief and have to continuously remind myself that I can’t plan for it.  I can only wait.  Wait for the day where the pain of losing him is less than the happiness from knowing him. While this seems impossible to me now, I have to cling to the hope that this day will come for me eventually. 

When words are not enough

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This Saturday marks 3 years since Jeremy took his last breath.
How can that possibly be?

Every year, I am in awe of how crazy it seems that so much time has passed, and yet how far away it seems when so much life has been lived in between. I have truly experienced more in the past 3 years than most people do in a lifetime. Since Jer died, I've bought 2 houses, purchased a new vehicle, traveled all over the country, lost and gained friends, dated and remarried, blended a large family, moved out of state, had a baby without his daddy, and am preparing to have another child with another man. Surely these things couldn't possibly describe MY life...

And yet, no matter how much life has been lived since I've seen Jeremy, the weight of the hole he has left in my life is still so evident, and still a very painful reality I face daily. The last several weeks have been especially hard for me. Part of it is because I now grieve so far away from his family and friends, far away from the life I shared with him, and far away from where I can feel his presence. I feel so far removed. I ache to hold on to pieces of him during this season. Part of it also is from the fact that the closer I get to delivering, the more terrified I feel. Pregnancy hormones alone could do me in, but the sleepless nights remembering a piece of my grief that I never thought I'd have to face again is sometimes too much. My anxiety level is high, to say the least.

I was texting with a friend this weekend just about how crazy it is that it's already been 3 years. And I realized how much I ached just to talk to someone about it. To let it out. To have someone actually ask me. I confessed that it's been hard to feel like I have no outlet lately. She asked me if writing was no longer an outlet. I had to think about that for a minute....

Writing has always been my way of expressing emotion. Words are my ally and my weapon of choice. They help me sort through my own head when things don't make sense. And being able to write about my grief journey has brought me more healing than I could have ever imagined. But I found myself at a crossroads of guilt. Guilt for feeling like I couldn't talk about the depths of my pain without somehow sounding ungrateful for the life I have now and the blessings that come with it. And guilt for being too grateful for the life I have now and feeling like people think it means I'm just ok and don't need to talk about Jeremy anymore. I also just don't like feeling like I'm seeking out attention. Writing makes people think they know me and therefore the personal connections are lacking because they think they know where I'm at. They can watch from a distance.

The truth is that words sometimes are not enough. Most of the time, I really don't have much NEW to say. I've run out of ways to express how much I miss Jeremy, how much my heart longs for him, how hard it is to watch my kids grow up without knowing him.......it really never changes, just evolves. I want to scream from the top of my lungs just how much grief sucks still sometimes. I want the world to know what an incredible husband I have now, and that how deeply I cherish him has no impact on the amount of grief I have and will continue to carry through the rest of this life. I wish I could find the right words....words that connect with everyone. But like Janelle said, we can't reach everyone. All we can do is write what we know, what we are living.

I keep going back to an analogy I heard shortly after Jeremy died, I think in a book I read somewhere. It painted a picture of train tracks, one track representing grief and one representing joy: both running side by side on the same path. They both exist together.

This week, I don't have the right words. Just a jumbled mess of emotions that seem to represent my heart these days. My words are not enough. But just remembering to put one foot in front of the other is sometimes all I need to do.