8 Years

Tell me how 8 years has passed?

Tell me how 8 years ago right now (615am) I was waiting for the last of the people to come be a part of his death.

Tell me how, after 8 years, it still seems as surreal as it did the moment it was happening?

I’ve distracted myself fairly well this year.  Worked a shit-tonne of overtime, went and had major surgery on the 24th. I’m post op day 2.

But the tears are still just behind the surface. They are a constant threat today and I’ve only been awake for a couple hours.

I miss him.  I miss his steadfast, calm ways. I miss his laugh. I miss his passion for fishing and the environment.

I don’t have a lot to say today, it’s a quiet sort of grief. It’s a “curl up on the couch, drink coffee, watch sad movies and crochet” kind of grief.

I wrote this post 4 months after he died. And today, I sit, with 4 stab sites in my belly, and stitches where my cervix used to be (are there stitches? I forgot to ask. I imagine they’re dissolveable if they exist) and there’s a distinct physical pain distracting me from the emotional pain.

It works, yo.

But don’t do it on your own.  Find healthy pains to make the emotional pain go away.  Go for a long walk. A hike. Lift weights. Garden. Lift heavy things. Rearrange your furniture.

Physical pain helps with the emotional pain.

I tell ya though. I could do without the gas pain.  The gas pain sucks.

The grief sucks just as much.

8 years.

Forever loved
Forever missed
Forever remembered
Mark W. Smith
May 18, 1963 – June 26, 2012.

I Grieve For You

I didn’t expect to.  You are a stranger to me.

You weren’t my patient.

You weren’t my friend.

I didn’t know you.

I wasn’t part of the team that tried to save you.

But I grieve for you.

A life cut short.  Similar age to my children.

For what?

Parents cry tonight.

Siblings mourn.

Cousins and extended family are brokenhearted.

A family is torn apart – a vital piece of it missing, gone forever.

I grieve for them too.

The family with the weight of your loss forever etched in their minds and hearts.

I grieve for the friends who are left behind.

The ones who saw the friend who died, the friends who saw the one who could have been, should have been.

I grieve for them.  The family. The friends. The acquaintances.

I grieve a referred grief.

You could have been my child. I could have been the mother. The sibling. The cousin and extended family. I could have been the friend or acquaintance.

I was the wife.

And I grieve for the losses no one expects.

I grieve for you tonight.

Why I can’t be Calm…

On January 19, 2012, my husband was in the bathroom vomiting. We called 911, and he was taken to the hospital.

In the hospital, we were given a diagnosis of pancreatitis. Over the next couple days, he got worse, and was transferred to a hospital with ICU capabilities.

In that first hospital he transferred to, they told us his kidneys were shutting down and that he needed to be transferred to a hospital with dialysis capabilities.

We got to THAT hospital.

I went home that night.

The next day, I set up dinner in the crock pot, left my kiddos playing video games with neighbours as emergency contacts and headed to the hospital.

I thought, in my infinite, uneducated wisdom, that we would be going through the same situation we’d been through before.

You see, 3 years prior, he’d had two heart attacks.  A few days in the hospital, and we were home. New regime, new diet, new plan of attack, new medications.  Each time. A few days of driving back and forth between the house and hospital – about an hour each way.

So I thought that this would be the same.

But it wasn’t.

It really really wasn’t.

And just under 6 months and another hospital later I left the hospital for the last time, knowing that I would never be back there again, that my role of being a “patient’s family  member” were over.

Except it’s not.

In just under 3 weeks, my youngest, my baby, my gorgeous amazon woman of a daughter will undergo a craniotomy to remove a brain tumour. In all the reading, all the literature, it says that they will go in, do the surgery, she’ll be transferred to the ICU and then after 3-5 days she’ll be sent home.

3. to. 5. fucking. days.

Are you KIDDING ME?

I’m supposed to be ok with this?

I’m not. I’m not on any level.

3 – 5 days and then she’s sent home?

I don’t know how to make my brain go back to that uneducated, naive view of life that will allow me to say “she’ll be fine. It’s a couple days, maybe a week in hospital then home for recovery.”

BECAUSE THAT DIDN’T HAPPEN THE LAST TIME.

The last time someone I loved went into the hospital they FUCKING DIED.

And so I’m in a constant state of panick. I’m trying desperately to be calm and keep things normal and be positive and upbeat but…

HE DIED.

HE DIDN’T COME HOME.

And I don’t know that I will survive it if she doesn’t.

This is Us

It has taken me almost a week to write about the Superbowl episode of This is Us.

It shook me, more than Grey’s Anatomy’s depiction of Derek Shepherd’s death (sorry if you’re not caught up on that – but it’s been a few years…) It shook me not because of the way he died, because Derek’s death was more like my husband’s but because of the aftermath.

The having to tell the children. The having to parent the children. The 20 years in the future and how the memories still affect Rebecca and how the children cope and how life was so drastically altered as a PARENT.

Not just the wife. The mother.

I can’t find a video of it, the moment where she goes to Miguel’s house to talk to the kids.  Where she stands in the doorway and tells him that she needs to be strong for her kids and if he can’t, he’ll need to take a walk until he can.

But in watching that…. all I could see was myself. How my kids went home in one car and I went home in another and I was lost. I was not a pillar of strength for my kids. I was not strong, I was not able, I was not the rock they needed to lean on.

All I could see in that moment was how I failed my children when their father died.

How one of my kids would tell me that she thinks of the good memories and is happy.  And I thought that was such an amazing thing. But really – she didn’t want me to be sadder.  Now, when her life is changing so much, she needs her dad and he’s not here and she’s ANGRY because she hasn’t grieved.

How one of my kids asked me after a fight with my chapter 2 if things were ok, because he didn’t want me to be sad again.

How my daughter says flat out that when I’m old, one of my other kids will be responsible for me because she took care of me when he died. She did her part.

How I failed them.

I don’t know how to fix that.

I was in so much pain. I hurt so badly. I couldn’t move past it. And I failed them.

This is Us showed another side of being a widow. It showed what happens on the other side – not just from the widow perspective, but from the children’s perspective.  Grey’s Anatomy doesn’t. The kids are a plot line, a side story that come out every once in a while to make a point.

And because of it, This is Us, the episode where Jack died, the episode after where they went to the funeral (and the odd needing to have him with her at all times) that affected me in a way I wasn’t expecting. I wasn’t expecting to be reminded of how I abandoned my kids when they needed me the most – not on purpose – just because I didn’t know how to cope with it myself.

How do I fix that? They are my heart.

Happy Anniversary!

It amazes me how many people I know that got married 18-22 years ago.

How many of them are still married.

How many of them are posting recently on Facebook about how they’re so happy to be celebrating their 18th, 19th, 20th, 21st, or 22nd anniversary and I love you SOOOOOO much.

How many of them I want to punch.

How much I want to cry about it.

Happy fricken anniversary.

It would have 18 years for me and Mark on Aug 21.

We *almost* got 13.

And I’m getting married to a new and amazing man soon-ish.

And I still want to tell all of them to STFU.

Don’t get me wrong.  I AM happy for them. I just want them to STFU about being happy about their anniversary when I didn’t get it.

Yep, totally selfish.  I wouldn’t actually tell them that though – I just send them a happy anniversary and move on.

But dammit.  Could you STOP with all the in-your-face love-y dove-y crap for a month or so?

kthxbai.

 

18 Years

Today would have been 18 years married.  We were together a year and a half before we got married, so we were coming up on 20 years together.

It has been 5 years since I’ve seen him. Touched him. Heard his voice. Listened to his heart beating.

I am afraid, most of all, of being without him longer than I was with him.  I am jealous of those people who had 30, 40, 50 years.  One client I talk to was a few months shy of 60 years before their spouse died.

Every day, every month, every year, takes me that much further away from when I last saw him and that much closer to the day when I’ll have been without him longer than with him.

I’m not destroyed today.  But I am sad.  And I am doing a lot of self care. And my lovely sexxy chef has been amazing in supporting me and helping me through this day.

Happy Anniversary to the dead guy.

I Miss You

It has been 4 years since you took your last breath.

It has been 4 years since we gathered around you, held your hand, and allowed you to move on to another place with love and laughter surrounding you.

It has been 4 years since the grey Vancouver sky opened up for one moment, and sunlight streamed in your window as you left us.

It has been 4 years since I crawled up on you to snuggle you one more time, because I knew it wouldn’t hurt you and I hadn’t been able to do that in 6 months.

It has been 4 years since I broke down on you, and finally realized… it wasn’t you anymore.

It has been 4 years since I kissed your cold forehead one last time and walked away from the hospital one last time.

It has been 4 years since our lives changed.

It has been 4 years.

And I love you as much today as I did that day.

I miss you.  Your children miss you. Our lives are not the same without you.

4 years.  4 fucking years without you and I want to reach out and touch you and talk to you and hold you again.

This song.  Every. Fucking. Time. 

The Curse of Conflicting Emotions

It’s been 3 1/2 years.  Almost exactly.

He’s dead.  He’s not coming back.  They took his body, stuck it in an incinerator and presented me with a very lovely, beautifully decorated box of what remained of him.

Some of his cremains are in the Squamish River.

Some of them are in various other rivers.

Some of them are in my skin.

Some of them sit on a shelf in my living room.

Some of them travel with me as I go to various places.

But he’s GONE.

And his absence leaves a hole in my heart that I don’t know how to heal.  Every new thing, every milestone that hits the wound rips open and bleeds a little more.

At the same time, I can’t live in constant pain.  I get told by people that I am grieving too hard, having a pity party, holding on to the past.

I get ripped open by people because I still love a dead guy and the dead guy’s absensce still causes me enormous amounts of pain.

How do I live with both? I thought it was going to be a matter of I fell in love again, the new love would give me joy, the joy would buffer me against the sadness but when the sadness hit, the new love would be the blanket I would wrap myself in while the pain washed over me.

The new love didn’t see it that way, and that fell apart, and now I live with loving a dead guy AND a live guy, neither of whom I can lean on, neither of whom I have a promise of growing old with.

I want to be happy again. I have been. I am.  But I want to be HAPPY.  I want to be sitting in my own living room, not dragged down by depression and sadness and grief.  I want to be as ok alone as I am when I’m snuggled up to someone.

I wonder; am I holding on too hard, missing him too much, trying to be the “perfect” widow? ?

Or am I just feeling, just loving, just being?

Someone said it’s at least 5 years before the pain won’t rip me apart anymore.  And then I read from other widows who are STILL going through pain as fresh and acute as it was 3 1/2 years ago, 2 1/2 years ago, a year and a half ago, 6 months ago… it still hurts.  It’s still painful and lonely and sad for them.

And I don’t want to be there.  But how to live with both?  The joy of a future being built as the pain of a future lost?

I don’t know.  I don’t know the answer.

Just as I can’t act my age because I’ve never been this old before, I can’t manage my grief because I’ve never been 3 1/2 years a widow before…

It Was Meant To Be…

When I was in employment flux, between my first and second seasons at BC Wildfire, I went to a career counsellor, jumped through some hoops and decided on Licensed Practical Nurse as my upgrade/career path.

My reasons:

1. The amazing nurses who inspired me.
2. To be of service
3. To be there for other people going through what I went through (simliar to #2)
4. Employability.
5. Mobility OR stability.

What I didn’t remember… was it was something I had thought about a long time ago.

This was part of an update post on April 13, 2012.  Almost 3 months after he initially went into the hospital.

I can’t do a point/arrow/highlight on a picture in a wordpress blog, but right in the middle… It says..

“If I could do it over again I would go into nursing or surgery because that was AWESOME to watch.”

 “I would go into nursing”

And yah.  In 2 months, I will be in nursing.

It was meant to be.  It is happening.

I know for a lot of widows/widowers, the phrase “everything happens for a reason” is cause for white hot rage, seriously offended, going to throat punch the speaker reactions.

For me?  It’s the truth.

Everything happened.  For. A. REASON.

I am exactly where I should be in my life.

I am doing what I am supposed to.

All avenues, all options have closed off and the path towards nursing is brightly lit, clear and safe.

I know where I’m supposed to go from here. I can see the way, and without EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENED…

I wouldn’t be here.

I’d be in Squamish still (miss my friends!) working with Co-operators, selling life insurance and probably doing an amazing job at it.

I’d have a husband who requires round the clock care with a recovery measured in years not months.

I’d be exhausted.  My kids would come second to my husband’s needs.  My husband would feel guilty about that.  He’d feel helpless and hopeless and lost and a burden.  I would probably spend more time trying to make him understand that he’s not a burden than just loving him, because he’d need that from me, from us.

The reality is, life would have amazing beautiful moments.  I would still be Mrs. Mark Smith.  I wouldn’t resent it for a moment.   But it would be my life, focussed entirely on my husband.

But now, I’m allowed to shine.

A friend of mine blogged a long time ago… he gave me my life back.  I know that he’d be here if he could… but in the end, he loved me, loved his family enough to let us out of the limbo we were in.  He loved us enough that he would have fought if there were any real options left.  But there weren’t.  So he let go, and let us move forward.

And now… where I’m supposed to be is coming to fruition.

I love him so much more for being willing to let go.  For doing what’s best for EVERYONE, instead of holding on and keeping us in that holding pattern.  It shows how amazing of a person he was.   And I wish everyone who reads this could have met him.  Could have known him.

He was so incredible and I was so blessed to have been loved by him.  So blessed to have been his wife for 13 years.  So blessed to be the mother of his children.  So very blessed to have loved him to his last breath.

Took It Off Again

When my ex-boyfriend and I were trying to work things out, I took off my ash pendant.

For a while… I forgot that I had taken it off. It didn’t cross my mind that I had taken it off.

And then a couple days ago, I found it on my end table.  I wanted to put it away but was in the middle of something else, so I just put it on again.   I forgot about it… wearing jewelry just becomes part of my skin.  If I wear it long enough I feel naked without it on.  If I take it off…after a while I don’t notice its absence.  (ask me about my wedding rings – i haven’t noticed that my fingers are bear in months)

So I put the ash pendant on.

And it bugged me.

It’s heavy.  I don’t know how I didn’t notice that before. It’s REALLY heavy.

And it sits right in my cleavage.  Right where my heart is, right between my boobs. So as I move around it bounces against my boobs.

And… it wasn’t comfortable.   I love it.  It’s beautiful.  It’s a lovely reminder of my dead husband.

But it didn’t *feel* right being on my body again.

I wear him in my skin.  I wear him in my heart. He is forever a part of me.

Maybe, just maybe, I am coming to that place of accpetance and moving on?  Almost fully at the “don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened state of mind” that would be so lovely?

I’d like to think that I’m coming to a place of peace.   To a place of… yes, I am a widow.  Yes, it’s part of what defines me much as being a mom did, being a wife did, being a student does.  It defines me, shapes the way I look at the world, but it is no longer my WHOLE world.

It is a big part of it.  Until I get married again, I’ll still check “widow” on the box, even if I have to write the box in because someone didnt’ think to put it there. Because it is so very much a part of who I am.

But it is no longer the focus of my entire world.

I miss him with every breath.  I wish with ever fibre of my being that we could have had the life we planned.   I think though, that I’m coming to a place of acceptance of what is.   Of the change in our relationship, in the change in my life, in the story I am writing for my own life.