Dear Dave

Dear Dave,

I just finished looking through our pictures again. Sometimes, fearing I've imagined my former life, I need proof that it all really happened.  Italy, our house rehab, Hawaii, Yellowstone, the hundreds of pics you took of your beloved students scrolled before my eyes. I sobbed and sobbed, scaring the cat with the sounds of my heart breaking, and what I really wanted to do, what I wish I could do, was smash everything in the room to pieces.

I wanted to feel my fist connect with glass and hear it shatter, with the drywall and feel it crumble under my fist. I wanted to throw the computer to the ground and stomp on it until it’s in countless pieces. I wanted to scream and scream and scream.

There was our life…all of it. Our home, our cats, our trips, our jobs, our love. There it was in pictures. All of it gone. What acceptable response to seeing that could there be, if not destroying something? What other way could I truly relieve this fury at the senselessness of your loss? What am I supposed to do with this anger? With this missing you? What do I do now? What do I do with it?

Do I keep feeling it and let it take me down? Do I push it away and act strong so no one has to hear me say yet again how sad I am? How shocked I am that this happened? So no one has to know that nearly 2.5 years later, I’m still brokenhearted and completely stunned that you’re gone?

I scrolled through our thousands of pictures until I got to June 3, 2011. On that day there were two pictures. They were both of the bag that collected your pee while you lay in that hospital bed at St. Pete’s Hospital.  You wanted to see the amount of pee in it to track your progress (your kidneys were shutting down, but we didn't realize it).

So you asked me to take a picture since you couldn’t get out of bed to see the bag. And then you sent a pic of the pee bag to some friends to make them laugh. Those pics were taken a matter of hours before they took you, the next day, away from me and sent you to Harborview Hospital.

You didn’t make it there alive, really. I never saw you conscious again. They said they’d gotten you stable, but then they lost you anyway. For a moment I thought maybe they could take it back. They could fix you.

I left you there.

Can you forgive me? I left your poor battered body in that fucking hospital room and I didn’t even go back in to see you or touch you.

Please forgive me. God, I’m so sorry.

The next photo was the only one taken on June 4, 2011 and eerily, it is completely black. A picture of nothing. So apt. On that day, the life I knew was snuffed out. Gone.

The following pictures, if they featured me, show the evidence of the darkness that had seeped into my eyes. I am not me. I am the outer shell of me, but I cannot find me in the eyes in those sockets that look like mine. It scares me to see those eyes.

Where did I go? Where did you go?

We had so much to do together. I’ve pushed myself to move on in my life, to not stop in my tracks or go backwards to be with you, but I’ve resisted it. When I do step into the current of life and it drags me ahead, I look back for you, but you’re fading and shrinking. I can no longer recall your smell. It’s so hard to remember your voice.

So little physically remains of our life together. It’s mainly just pictures now. I stare so closely at the pictures. I stare at your wedding ring. I stare at your eyes. I stare at your shirt and your jacket. I stare at your beard. I think maybe if I stare long enough. If I can see, like x-ray vision, through the computer, and into the picture itself, into the pixels, I’ll find you there. I’ll feel you again. I’ll hear you tell me it’ll all be okay. I’ll feel that safe again, like I did when you were here.

But you are not there, even amongst the pixels. You are not here. You left. And I am here. What am I to do with this? What happens to 15 years of my life? They’re just pictures now? That’s it? Pictures? It’s ridiculous. I don’t believe it. There must be some mistake.

 And, then I have to get up from the computer and go about my day and it crashes down on me for the millionth time. This is my life now. It's not a mistake. You did die. I will live out the rest of my life without you.

My heart is broken. Sometimes I feel hopeful and sometimes I don't want to go on without you. Sometimes I can embrace the idea that I was so lucky to have had 15 years with you and other times I'm so jealous of couples who've had more that I hate them. Some days I still want to curl up in bed and give up.

Some days I think I can take on the world. But every day, every moment, I miss you and our life together. That never changes.You gave me the family I never had and always wished for. I know you didn't want to go. I know you'd be here if you could. I know you can't come back. I know it wouldn't be honoring you to give up.

I won't. I love you. You changed my life.

Fear Didn't Win

Mel is sick today, so I am filling in for her and hoping she gets well soon! M

Me and my boys at the fourth annual Share the Road Ride

Yesterday we hosted the fourth annual Share the Road Ride. This is the only Soaring Spirits event that is dedicated to my Phil in any obvious way. Banners, flyers, t-shirts all bear his name. Friends from all areas of our shared lives come together, volunteers donate their time to support our Share the Road message, and Phil's love for a good, long ride up a tough hill is honored by every bike that heads out on the road.

Phil died in a cycling accident on August 31, 2005. I don't often repeat the brutal details of his death. Over the years I have found quieter ways to tell the story of how his life ended, utilizing vague details to shield whomever I am speaking to from that horrific images that once played in my brain on an endless loop. There was a time when passing a cyclist on the road took every ounce of will I possessed. Each of my three kids learned to drive after Phil's death, I will never forget the feeling in the car as each of them found the courage to pass that first bicycle on the road. We see Phil on the road, every day.

Which is why ride day is always a mix of terror and awe for me. When we send riders out on the road for the start of the ride, my heart pounds, my hands sweat, and I am often near tears. Since Phil's death I am more aware than ever that every helmet I see on the road is worn by a person who is loved by someone else. Every year on ride day I see someone's mom, dad, husband, wife, son, daughter, friend taking off to ride the roads next to the cars who have the power to take their precious life in a matter of seconds. And I am petrified.

But, fear can't win. Death can't win.

Life must win.

If Phil was fortunate enough to have survived his accident, I know without a doubt that he would have ridden his bike again. He would have told me that you only live once, and that he wasn't going to give up doing what he loved. I can almost hear him listing all the other ways he might die, and also expressing what a boring life he would lead if he let fear win. Then he would have continued living his life as large and loud as possible.

And I would have fretted, worried, imagined the worst, and then thrown my leg over my own bike to ride beside him onto our next adventure. So, yesterday's ride (in the worst weather we have ever had on ride day!) was MY way of "getting back on the bike." I will not allow fear to keep me from honoring my husband's life. I will not allow fear to steal precious moments of MY life by over-worrying and under-living. I will not spend the time I have left on earth limiting my dreams with what-ifs and maybes.

I will live, because he didn't. And in that living, I will carry his spirit with me into my next adventure, knowing he would be proud.

5

***Written in 2010, but with a 2013 photo. With this year being my 5th Anniversary, I thought it a perfect time to re-post. :)***

This weekend I'll be at the Austin City Limits Music Festival. 8 stages, over a hundred bands, but to me it is so much more.

Last October, my best friend (and fellow widow) and I ventured out on the green grass, drinking wine from sports bottles, listening to amazing music, having a grief/stress free time.

Of course, since Michael's death I've had many days that way. Worry free, almost to the point where I forget that he's even dead, but what differentiated that festival weekend from anything else was the affect it had once the 3 days were over.

You see, after Michael died, the future was unbearable fathom. Minute by minute was as far as my mind and heart could comprehend. As time passed I could maybe look a month or two ahead, but after ACL happened the amazing happened. I went and bought tickets for the next year's festival over a year in advance.

I couldn't believe it, but it felt so good. 2 years after my soul mate's passing, I had seen the possibility of looking forward to something not only in the future...but a year in the future!

So you see, this weekend is more than a music festival, it is a marker of what has allowed me to see and plan and get excited for life again. It is 3 days, that year ago allowed me to look 365 days ahead, allowing me to be set free from the fear of having to face another second without my other half.

“My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there”
-Charles F. Ketering

What If I Forget ...

What If I Forget ....

His smell. His funny lips and the way they turned up at the corner. His skin.
His dry skin that always needed chapstick, and his back that always needed to be scratched.

What If I forget ...

Those piercing blue eyes that became someone else's eyes when he donated them to the eye bank.
The way they looked at me. Through me. Into me. The way they saw my soul.

What If I forget the way he held his guitar pick, or how he looked so focused and intense when playing a new chord - a new song. What if I forget how he would make me sit on the couch next to him and listen to the music he had just created, or how he used my knees and legs as imaginary drums - playing each beat on them with his fingers and thumbs. The way my voice sounded when I sang with his melody. The way we harmonized in song and in life. The way that our marriage was like a duet. What if I forget ....

I'm scared. I'm terrified of forgetting. Living in constant fear of not recalling the large and the tiny moments of our time together. The only thing I have now - moments. Moments that are gone. Past tense. They live in my memory, and what if my memory were to fade away like the wind, like some thin tissue paper disappearing into the wind ...

What then? For what is a life except for what it leaves behind? We have no children. No legacy to live out his name. No son or daughter to be like their daddy. Just me. The wife. The widow. The responsibility - the honor - falls upon me to make sure he is remembered, to make sure that his spirit and his beautiful soul lives on, to make sure that his kindness and his humor and his epic love of animals is seen somehow, in the world and the universe around me. So what if I forget? I cannot ever forget. I cannot let myself. I could never forgive myself. To forget anything about him - anything at all - would be like a betrayal to our love. To his life. The worst thing I could ever do would be to not recall a memory. A fraction of time. A molecule in the days and months and years that we had with one another. The worst thing would be to go blank.

Will the memories fade with time? With age? Will I always be able to see him when I close my eyes? Can I shut off the world and just imagine all those times that he would slowly cover me with a blanket, or hold my hand while humming to himself softly, or pout his bottom lip at me when he wanted something? Will I be able to pull up, from the file cards in my brain, the silly songs we made up and sang to each other? How many times will I have to keep singing them to our kitties, pretending that they are him? Trying like hell to keep it burned in my mind, for all eternity ...

It's been 2 years now, and his clothes no longer smell like his clothes. They are just clothes. His guitars remain sitting in silence, because the music is ruined without him, and I dont know how to play. He tried to teach me a bunch of times, but I didnt have the patience. He told me stories a bunch of times too - about his childhood, his days in the Air Force, stuff that happened at work while being on the ambulance. I never paid enough attention. I should have listened more. I didnt know that I needed to imprint it into my heart. I didnt know that his heart would stop beating.

I carry with me the 7 years we spent dating long-distance, and the almost 5 years we spent together - here - happy and engaged - and then married. So joyously and wonderfully married. My favorite word was always husband. Nothing I loved more than calling him my husband. So now, I must carry the sacred pages of our marriage with me in the spaces of my heart - and treat them with the most fragile touch. For if they should break or tear or get lost in the cruel, cold wind - and I cannot get back the pieces - I will have to re-trace each chapter, bit by bit - until I am able to find the things that were once our life. Our beautiful, precious life.

And what if I forget? I will not forget. I cannot forget. Because the second I forget, is the second that he truly, really dies.

I promise

source

"Don't be too late tonight, I really want to spend some time with you."

"I won't. It'll be an early hunt. I'll be back before the kids go to bed. I promise."

I promise. Right before we exchanged I love you's, this was one of the last things I heard Jeremy say to me. I've played it out so many times in my head, it gets very muddled now, and I don't even remember the exact words, but I promise always pulses through. Because when I hear it in my head, it can still make me hurt and even make me angry.

I hear people constantly throw around these two words. I even find myself doing it once in awhile when I'm not thinking. I heard my children promising all kinds of things to me and their siblings the other day, and it triggered my emotions. There have been other times in the past where I've heard 'I promise' and it triggered vicious tears.

I now have an aversion to the phrase 'I promise.' Not because I don't think people don't mean it, but because I've waited on a promise before and watched all my hopes and dreams come crashing down as that promise was broken. And it wasn't intentional, but broken nonetheless. I know at the heart, people want to be trusted and confirm that they'll follow through on something, but those words still sting in my heart.

He promised.

He made a promise he didn't know he couldn't keep.

Now, I can't trust a promise.

They say don't make promises you can't keep. But people think they're invincible. We here know differently and we take and make promises with a little more caution because we know a promise can be broken in the blink of an eye, with one phone call, with one breath.  Anytime I hear the phrase, it's like I can hear Jer's voice through it and the promise suddenly sinks into my gut.

So, I try to be careful about what I promise to people. Because I never want to leave those words unfinished on someone else's heart.

Progress ......

"The way of progress is neither swift nor easy."

-Marie Curie

...... is not a word I would've used to describe any part of my "After" in the first few years.  

Hell, I was trying too hard to just keep breathing, to just stay alive when I'd really rather not.

Progress?  Who gave a damn about progress ...... I was using most of my strength to keep myself from sliding down into the bottom of the deepest, darkest, coldest cave I'd ever experienced ...... knowing that if I slid in too far, I would not return.

Progress?  In looking back I can now see that not staying in that cave was indeed, progress.

But it really is only in looking back that that became apparent.

But I have to say that Marie Curie was spot on when she said, "The way of progress is neither swift nor easy."

This thing I call my "After" was anything but.

It was painfully slow, but it was progress.

Although I would never have used the noun progress , I did start to learn the verb progress.  I realized that just putting one foot in front of the other was to progress ...... was to move forward.  Not move on, mind you, but move forward.  I will never "move on" from Jim, my love for him, and from my "Before".  But I have, and will continue to move forward.  I will progress, because I was finally able to make the choice to do so.  It took a long time ...... a very long time, for me to be able to see that I could choose ...... before I knew I had the strength to choose. And when that happened, I knew that I was progressing.

This road is long.  And it's not smooth, or easy, or quick.  It's filled with land mines, huge holes of depression, the needs of others, unfair comparisons (from other people as well as from ourselves), ever-changing relationships and a myriad of constantly swirling emotions that not only threaten to pull us under, but keep us from having the strengh to figure out who we are now in the "After" that we never chose.

As we all walk in our "Afters" together, I think the most important thing I can tell you is this:

                       "It does not matter how slowly you go so long as 
                                             you do not stop."

                                                   -Confucius

And while I think Confucius was a very wise man, I disagree with him on one small point, that really isn't so small:  You can stop.  You can take many stops on those days when moving forward takes more energy than you have.
Just don't stay stopped.

I've spent time with those who have stayed stopped ...... who have not moved forward in a very long time.
That choice is not for me.  It's not what my kids want for me and it's certainly not what Jim would've wanted.  Nor I for him.

And I hope it's not what you want. 
Because no matter how difficult this is to hear ...... and I know that it is ...... Life is for the living.
And there's a lot of living to be had out there ...... even while we grieve.  Don't wait to live, thinkig that you'll do it when the grief goes away.  You'll never live.
The grief is here.  It becomes far less overwhelming and it loses the capacity to drop you to your knees, or pull you down that dark cave, but it's always there.

And that's the way it should be.  You had a love.  You experienced love.  Hopefully they were both great.
In my opinion, great love never goes away.
Thank God.  
If great love never goes away then we cannot expect our grief for that love to go away.  
But I promise you this ...... it becomes much easier to live with.

So keep progressing.
Move forward when you can.
Don't stop for good.
And keep breathing.   

I promise it's worth it.
Eventually.
                  

Looking after me.

There's someone I've been neglecting for the past 3.5 years. 
She is strong, but has infrequent, spectacular meltdowns due to the ....(there is no word to describe this but widows know the feeling) .... of it all. 
She loves hard, but falls hard. 
She picks herself back up again, dusts herself off and keeps going. 
She takes every sling and arrow personally .... yet never backs away from fighting for something she believes in.
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School has been out for a week and there are still a few days of holidays to go before we head into the insane final term of the year.  Its a reporting term.  With a fete thrown in for good measure.  I know I will need something extra to get myself through to December....

So this week, I have been looking after me.

I've been eating right and walking lots. 
I've been indulging my passion for photography. 
I've been dog sitting and remember what fun it is to have a dog.
I bought myself the first non-work clothes I've had in the past 3.5 years.
I've listened to music I like .. Ed Sheeran, Passenger, Kate Miller- Heidke.....
I've read books and watched movies.
I decided that I can no longer cope with all of the housework and have just hired a cleaning lady to help me once a fortnight (oh the luxury!).

I've even found time to go out for a meal with a friend without the children.

Maybe its Spring talking, but life feels full of possibilities. 

and that feeling is amazing.

I know that I am riding the crest of a wave, but maybe I can surf this one for a little while longer and the next trough won't be so deep.