Lost

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I dreamed of him last night. For the first time in months and months, I dreamed about him and remembered it.

When I woke up I had the vague feeling that he'd made an appearance and then I couldn't quite remember actually seeing him in the dream. It was like he was there, but only as a presence, just outside of my peripheral vision.

Not a ghost. Not back from the dead. It wasn't a dream where I know he has died and I'm trying to figure out how it is that he's back.

It was a dream in which he was alive and with me, but I couldn't SEE him. Or I don't remember seeing him and this drives me insane. I want desperately to see him again, even it's only a dream Dave.

We were on a group tour of some sort of facility. Maybe a college campus building, I'm not sure. The building was like a maze and the deeper we were led into it the more lost I got, but I knew he'd help us find our way back out again or if not, at least we'd be lost together. Everything would be okay as long as we were together.

At some point, though, the tour disbanded and I suddenly realized Dave was gone, too. I had lost him in the maze and had no idea how to get back to our car or even how to get out of the building. I couldn't even remember where we were in relation to our home.

I was vaguely worried at first, and tried to text him and call him, but my phone was suddenly and inexplicably not my phone. All my contacts were gone, it wouldn't work properly, I didn't know what number to dial, it was malfunctioning and on and on and on, my concern and frustration growing. Hours passed and I could do nothing but continue to try to reach him but I made no progress. The overall feeling was that I would never find my way home again if I couldn't find him. I wasn't terrified so much as worried, lost and confused. At some point I realized that he was never coming back and that's when I woke up.

Later today, I remembered what proceeded that tour on which he disappeared. We'd moved into a little house on the ocean and it was more beautiful, peaceful and calming than I can describe. I was overjoyed to be starting a new life with him by the sea in our perfect little house all filled with light and views of the ocean.

It's not too tough to decode this one. Life is in order, beautiful, comforting and full of loveliness until I lose this man and then I'm lost. Can't find my way back home.

Externally, this isn't a true assessment of my life now. I'm finding my way, slowly but surely. I'm fighting to make a future for myself that both of us would be proud of. My life did not completely disintegrate when he died, it just changed completely and is now a life I never imagined for myself.

But internally, I feel the before and after so acutely, still. The sense that something right, and true and golden was taken away and its absence has left me lost and unmoored. That with him was taken my sense of peace and love and beauty...my home. He was my home.

Not that I don't ever feel or experience peace or beauty or love now, but they are on a much smaller scale than before and feel dulled by the pain of his absence. He loved me so much that it made me feel as though my life had a purpose and truly meant something. He has always been home for me. The home I searched for until I met him and then the home he embodied when he was alive.

I'm missing my home.

It falls on me to provide that for myself now, but that is a task I'm still not convinced I can do without him. His particular love for me isn't something I can ever find a replacement for and don't want to.

What the future brings, I don't know. I have hope and look forward to many things, yes. But my true home is gone. That's a big loss to process, much less heal from. I can imagine that I might one day feel a new sense of home, but it's hard to imagine now.

I don't have a choice though. I have to keep going, hoping that time (and more so, my own hard work) will bring me the healing I so long for. Hoping that I will one day feel at home again, somehow.

If he could, he'd beg me to find the courage to keep hoping for that day. That's enough to keep me going. I want to do right by him. But more than anything I miss feeling the way I did when he was by my side and I haven't wanted to admit it lately, but I still feel lost because he's not.

Inner Voice

**Filling in for Amanda today...but she will be back next week!**

Decision making was never difficult for me. Options don't confuse me, and once I have made a choice I rarely question myself. I realize that many people engage in a mental wrestling match with every decision they make, and I have regularly been grateful that my mind and I generally agree pretty quickly. 

And then came widowhood.

One of the most disturbing aspects of widowhood for me was the about face I experienced in my decision making abilities. My previously certain mind betrayed me at every turn. When Phil died an avalanche of decisions that needed to be made immediately began, and then an on-going slide of questions to be answered by the last person standing continued. The first heart wrenching choices to be made included: whether or not to donate his organs (you have to make this one in less than 24 hours), burial vs. cremation, what type and how many memorial services to have, and will you be purchasing a monument Mrs. Hernandez? Once these choices were made I began to second guess each one asking myself repeatedly if I made the right choice.

The decision making process did not get any easier as the weeks and months passed. I discovered that I was entering the wrestling match of the uncertain on a daily basis without regard for the importance of the choice to be made. Was I doing this task correctly? Should I purchase the blue or the brown sheet set? Water the grass every other day or every third day? One minute option A seemed best, the next minute I was more inclined to go with option B. I found myself seeking advice on choices large or small; allowing myself to be swayed toward my adviser's way of thinking regardless of what my own instincts were telling me. Buy a new fence or fix the old? Sell Phil's truck or keep it? Get a gardener or teach the kids how to mow the lawn? Vacation or no vacation? The list went on and on....making a decision of any sort became a monumental effort. I lost confidence in myself, and began to believe that everyone else knew what I needed better than I did. Until one day when a well meaning friend stepped over the line regarding my privacy, and a little voice sounded inside my head..."He did not just do that!" Hearing the familiar sound of my own voice I realized in one mind blowing moment how much of my daily life I was allowing to be determined by what other people thought, felt, knew, said, or sometimes even ordered. The silence of my inner voice suddenly became deafening.

The truth is our inner voice still speaks while we are grieving, but sometimes we can't hear her/him over the din created by sorrow. The initial realization that we are no longer a part of a couple often begins an all-consuming tempest inside of us. But at the eye of the storm still rests the core of our being. That innermost self still knows what we need. When I first became aware that I was abdicating my right to run my own life, I asked myself the question...who are you? I didn't recognize the woman I saw in the mirror, because I allowed her voice to be silenced by grief.

When my inner voice finally spoke, the first thing she told me was that I would be okay. She spoke up when I tried to do too much, and pointed out when I needed a mental health day. When I wanted to quit, she reminded me that quitting wouldn't stop the pain. When I began to hear her again, she helped me choose between going out to dinner with friends and staying home to watch a movie. Myself helped me figure out how to manage the holiday season. She knew instinctively what I needed on the first anniversary of Phil's death, and all the ones that have come after. She consistently, and confidently, knows which choice is best for me. Sometimes I ignore her, and when I do I usually pay a price. But she loves me and she is proud of what I have done, and of who I am becoming. Only she knows the effort this has required. Finally I realized that her approval is what I need most. No one knows me better than I know myself. But I only discovered that fact when I was willing to trust my inner voice once again.

Maybe I'm crazy

Sometimes I am positive I get signs from Greg.

Like psychic stuff. 
(...and now you will all think I have finally lost my ever-loving mind for thinking I can talk to dead people).

I am a  scientist for goodness' sake. 
I am trained to be a sceptic.
But sometimes I have dreams.  *Clear* dreams.  Clear dreams that sometimes eventuate soon after.  Like when I dreamed Greg had died and woke in a cold, gasping sweat ..... about a month before he was killed.Never had a dream like it before or since. 

I had a series of "things" happen recently that resulted in me making a giant leap forward (and a tiny backwards step).
I think that was Greg pushing me onwards because he knew I was so frightened to take that first step. 
...and that step started with a dream.

Sometimes I have  recurring dreams  where I am thrilled to have finally found Greg after searching for so long.  ....and we hug and talk and connect and then I beg and beg and beg him to come home or to at least visit the children ....and he refuses every time.  It's like a rejection from the one man I could always count on to love me no matter what.  ...and a rejection of our children, and I know they were his pride and joy.  He always explains that he would if he could, but no amount of wheedling and begging results in him agreeing to return to us.  He is uncharacteristically and annoyingly firm on that score.

 Once, when I found him in a dream,  I asked him WHY he had to die.  WHY him? ...and his answer was a clear as could be: "there was a car accident".  Derrrrr.  He didn't have the all-knowing Reason either.

Maybe this is all just my brain trying to fathom the unfathomable; process the un-processable.
That's what Scientist Me would say.
...but then I add the dream to the coincidental "thing" (out of the blue phonecall from someone straight after a dream / extreme "luck" following a dream about that same thing happening / flashing neon light in front of my face / just *knowing* stuff/ before I could possibly know / almost always knowing who is going to be on the end of the ringing phone / etc etc etc) and it adds up to a coincidence so huge that it is almost impossible for my mind to accept that so many "things" could just be "coincidental".
...and Psychic Me declares "SIGN".

 ....

It's crazy, this place my mind inhabits. 
Where hard science and para-science sit side by side, not talking, not even acknowledging each other.
.....but then, I believed (still) in God for so long without questioning the idea that my beliefs and scientific knowledge sat side by side, nodding to each other and in perfect agreement in my head ... one is the process that describes the other.
 Why should this belief be any different?

Maybe I am crazy.
Maybe I am not.

I don't think I really care anymore.... if this crazy, magical thinking means I feel better about my life, then I'll take it over despair any day.

(But please tell me I'm not the only one here.  Please tell me I'm not crazy .... or that you are all crazy right here with me).