We write about widowhood as we live it. Together we examine the good, the bad, and the ugly parts of life as a widowed person. The views expressed here are those held by each individual author. We take no credit for their brillance; we just provide them with a forum for expressing their widowed journey in words that are uniquely their own.
I'm having computer problems, so I'm writing via my iPhone. Today I moved into my new home. It's a home I fell immediately in love with. During the past few days I have trying to coordinate so many things at once, and found myself amazed at how smoothly it was all going. As others have pointed out to me lately, life seems to be going my way.
If life is going my, then why did I find myself in tears last night?
It was the end of a very long day. Most of my things at my temporary home were packed up, and many of them had been driven over to the new house. I had my cousin helping me out. Then late in the evening I realized that the next day was the big move, and I would be completely on my own. The problem was that I had two cars to move, yet by the next day I would be the only driver. You see I haven't been able to part with Michael's car. He loved that car, and we took so many wonderful day trips in it. When I shared my dilemma, my cousin was quick to offer to follow me out to the new house.
I shouldn't be surprised, but as soon as I got into the car, and began driving it to my new home, I began sobbing. I was driving home, and he would never be there. I was driving home, and I would be expected to be happy. I was driving home, and I needed to be open to new possibilities.
I said good bye to this guy a few days ago. Actually what I said was, “Let's just call this what it seems to have turned into, a friendship.…”
I did it in an an email cause I tried to break it off once before over the phone and I moronically then asked him if he wanted a second chance (I KNOW!!! I KNOW…not my finest moment in the newly learning-to-date world.)
“Be a master of your petty annoyances and conserve your energies for the big, worthwhile things. It isn’t the mountain ahead that wears you out - it’s the grain of sand in your shoe.” -Robert Service
I'm just really tired. I've sat and thought of something to write about but it eludes me and my lids become heavier. It's December, the hardest month of every year since Michael was killed, someone very close to me is ill, I have amazing things going on too, and it piles and piles. I have a damn grain of sand in my shoe of life.
I think I just need a good nights rest, then I'll lean over, pull off my shoe, flip it over and start a new day...a day hopefully focused on the mountains ahead...the mountains I can't wait to conquer and climb...one by one...
My children are aware that Christmas is in 23 days. Already they are making their preparations for the big day. Snow flakes already adore most of the windows in our house, our advent calendar is hanging above the fireplace and letters to Santa are ready to post. After ruminating long and hard over what she would write, my eight year old daughter, Liv, stood up from the kitchen table with a letter for Santa clutched in her skinny, little hands. Hope and excitement lit her face. "Do you think Santa can bring whatever you ask for if you only ask for one thing?", she whispered. "It depends what it is, I suppose", I answered nervously imagining pink polka-dotted unicorns and hot-air balloon rides to the moon being requested. I was surprised when she handed over her note. Her words make me vacillate between laughter and tears.... I don't know what I'd do without these little people who make life so much harder and some much more bearable in one motion.
P.S. Briar asked for a remote control monster truck taller than his head. Not as emotionally charged, but certainly enough to strike fear in a mother's heart. How the HECK is Santa going to pull off Christmas????
If someone had been able to tell me 27 years ago (and I had believed them) that I would experience Hell on Earth, walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, be a single mother of six kids, and ..... know the pain of being a widow at a young age ...... would I have still married Jim?
Honestly? Probably not. I mean, wouldn't hearing that scare the crap out of anyone, especially a 23 year old girl/woman?! (To be perfectly frank .... the part about the six kids would have had me moving out of the country!)
But .... if this person had also been able to tell me that during the next 27 years I would experience a love that defied reason, the feeling of two hearts actually becoming one, the unquestionable support and encouragement from the best man I knew, and the opportunity to watch him grow as a husband, father, businessman, community leader and a Christian ..... then maybe I would have continued down the aisle.
Most days I can say that the Dance was worth far more than the Pain can ever dish out.
Some days .... I'm not so sure.
Those are the days when I have to make the single parent gut-wrenching decisions, the days I feel that I am much less of a person now, the days that I feel I cannot stand his absence one more second, the days that there are 4 things that need to be fixed in the house, two of the cars have red lights staring at me and one of the kids is ready to defy my wavering sense of authority. Those are the days that my whole body is wracked with the pain of grief and even breathing is almost too difficult to accomplish.
On those days the Pain is more like a living thing that threatens to take over my already-weakening existence.
But then there are other days ..... increasingly more days now ..... when I can stand strong against the Pain and know without a doubt that I would .... AND could, live through it all again ..... just to have one more chance to Dance.
The Dance gave me the love that fuels my heart, no matter how broken it is.
The Dance gave me 27 years of good times and bad times, but more importantly .... growing together times.
The Dance gave me six pieces of Jim .... each reminding me of him in so many different ways (both good and irritating!).
The Dance gave me strength .... to be my own woman because I was loved for who I was.
The Dance gave me more than I think I could ever list .... it gave me Us .... and everything and everyone that entailed.
The Pain took Us away .... on the outside, but it can never remove Us from my heart.
The Pain knocked me to the ground ..... and yet ultimately gave me the desire to be strong enough to defiantly get back up again.
The Pain made me question myself ..... who I am and what I can accomplish, but it also caused me to remember the love that grew me into the woman Jim knew.
The Pain ripped away my support and my foundation. Or rather .... it and I thought it did. The Pain didn't know that I still had God .... and the love of family and friends.
Yes, the Pain has given .... and taken away ..... so very much in my life. And I know that it's not done.
But the Dance .....
Oh the Dance.
The Dance continues to warm my heart again and make me smile.
The Dance gave me enough love and memories to push past anything the Pain has to thrust into my life.
The Dance made me into the woman that Jim loved ..... and into the woman I am today.
A different woman indeed.
But a stronger woman.
A woman who knows that life is short and that it sometimes sucks.
Very much.
But a woman who also knows that life is precious. And that loved ones are to be held tightly .... for a while.
A woman who knows that she can .... and will survive.
And a woman who knows that life can be enjoyed ..... all over again.
I am a woman who Danced.
And would do it all over again .... in spite of the outcome.
And maybe, just maybe ..... I am a woman who will Dance again.
It's been 5 years. In that 5 years I've changed in so many ways. I'm still the same old me, but different. Daniel didn't know this me. The one that survived his loss, the one that has been raising our child by myself. The one that bears the burden of making it all happen, all day, every day.
You'd think it would make me more serious, all of this loss, all of the responsibility, all of the stress. It hasn't. In many ways I'm more light-hearted than I was before. Life is beautiful and life is short. I am reminded of that daily. When I forget for a moment and get bogged down in the minutiae, usually I snap out of it quickly. What's the use? I know that I could be hit by a truck tomorrow. If my number is called, I want to be sure I'm enjoying my life at the moment it happens. No excuses, no regrets.
I couldn't ever imagine loving someone besides Daniel, but then I couldn't imagine the horrors of his cancer and living without him either. Apparently anything is possible. Weeks before Daniel died he told me he was afraid I'd choose to be alone and he didn't want that for me. He gave me his blessing when I couldn't bear to hear it, but his words have echoed in my head on and off for 5 years.
Sooooo, I'm outing myself on the blog and confessing to you guys that I'm seeing someone. I have been for a few months now, and it has been fabulous. He's fantastic and I'm so lucky to have stumbled across him. Sometimes life makes you margaritas and even salts the rim at no extra charge :) It's different being in this relationship; I'm different. But in the words of a wonderful friend, different doesn't have to be bad, different can be really, really good.
