And Now?

You miss your old life...

How could you not?


But here you are...

Faced with starting anew.


Where do you go from perfection?


How do you move ahead...

When you've been left behind?


So what happens next?


Your life was blessed...

And then cursed.


How do you live again...

Without the girl who gave you life?

Whispers

I miss her whispering softly...

Dragging Up Boxes

In November when people first started yammering about the local radio station finally flipping over to Christmas music...I wasn't anxious to seek it out.  I thought the first note would open the flood gates and bring back memories of Christmas with Sue.

But there's something comforting about Christmas music to me.  I'm talking about the old stuff...the stuff I grew up with...the stuff that filled my house as a kid...the stuff I continued to play alone in my apartment during my twenties before I was lucky enough to have someone to listen with by the fire.  

When I played Johnny Mathis, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, or Nat King Cole...I wasn't shot back to Christmas with Susan...because the music represented a lifetime to me...my life.

So I played my favorites...edging myself closer to making the leap of bringing up the boxes. I was hoping that opening the Christmas boxes was going to be as simple as turning the radio dial and finding those comforting songs...but I knew better.  

I knew those boxes contained our life...our Christmases...our memories of the boys enjoying the wonder of the season.  And I was scared to look at our life...scared to stand there and stare at it all alone.

So I put it off.

I put it off longer than I probably should have...longer than I wanted to.  

I wanted to have myself a Merry Little Christmas...I wanted one for my boys.

They will only have so many Christmas Seasons in their lives where they are enveloped in the wonder and magic of believing.  And I wanted them to have as much of that as possible...they had already been robbed of enough childhood.

But each day...something stopped me from dragging up those boxes.  

I've learned that every first is painful...but it's also a nail in the coffin...so to speak.

As we have tackled each first as a family...we have moved further from when we were a family of four...instead of just three.  We have moved further from her being alive...and in our lives. Opening those boxes without her was going to be...in essence...closing the chapter on sharing Christmas with her.  

Not something I wanted to do...because I couldn't imagine Christmas without her.

But here it was...approaching more quickly each day.

What could I do?

So I dug down deep...got my game face on for the boys...and dragged up some boxes.

'Tis the Season?

I thought it would start on Halloween.  I had anticipated the worst.  But as the days went by...it really didn't seem so awful.  There was just enough down time between the 31st and Thanksgiving Day to fool me into believing I was going to be fine...I was going to be able to handle the season.

But this past week crashed down on me.

I'm never surprised...just never quite prepared.

Earlier in the month the boys and I celebrated Susan's Birthday as a way of remembering how much she had brought to our lives.  But trying to celebrate my Birthday yesterday was a reminder of how much I will be missing her in my life as each year passes...a reminder of what the boys will miss...a reminder of what she will never experience.

Last week brought a slew of memories...

Not just Holidays and celebrations...but reminders of how we tackled everything...together.

My School Conferences came and went...But the ease in which we got through those two days was gone.  The days and nights were hectic...difficult...and dreadful.  The boys didn't see me at all on Monday...they rose from bed to others and were put to bed by someone else.  Not what we planned...not what we struggled the last 12 years for...

Ben agonized through the week with strep throat...a cold...an allergic reaction to medicine...and pink eye.  With every minute I stayed up caring for him...through coughing, crying and fever...I was reminded of how Sue and I worked through the hard times together...with a touch of a smile and a wink of our eyes.

Even when life was hard...we had each other to lean on...to hold...to love.

As the air gets colder...and the nights get longer...I find myself struggling.  I want to live...live for her...live for the boys. I want to do this with every ounce of my body.  But all I can do is think of what lies ahead in the next few months...Christmas...New Year's Eve...Our Anniversary...Valentine's Day...and the day that will mark a year since she last held me.

Counterweight

Surely grief must have a counterweight...

Be Thankful

What do you give thanks for when your world has come tumbling down around you?

Thanksgiving Dinner was so strange tonight.  The food was delicious...I enjoyed every bit of it.  The company was wonderful...I love my family so much.  But the whole celebration seemed empty...not just in me, but in the room.

It would have been one thing if Susan had been just visibly absent tonight...but it was so much more.

She had always brought the moment with her when she entered a room...and that was absent tonight.  Gone was the laughter...the fun...the love of a girl who simply relished these moments...these times where we shared our thanks for being so lucky.

That luck seemed to have run thin.

The drive home was quiet and reflective.  The boys' heads fell in opposite directions as they nodded off to sleep.  And I drove...staring at the empty passenger seat...the whole way thinking about how she should have been curling up and closing her eyes next to me as I drove.

The word three pounded through my head...as I tried to make sense of how we had become a family of just three.

One at a time, I carried my sleeping boys from the car...to the stairs...and to their beds. Thinking about how we would have been so thankful for this early night.  How we would have spent the next few hours alone...just us two.  Free to be thankful for how lucky we were in each others arms.

Instead...I rambled aimlessly around our house...like a lost old man.

Finally I sat...and forced myself to examine what I have to be thankful for as my world comes tumbling down around me.  I have two boys...full of their mother's love...full of their mother's laughter...full of their mother's compassion...full of their mother's talents.

I'm lucky to have this...but I still wish I had that same luck I was so thankful for nine months ago.

A Plain Page

I start this off without any words...

A plain page...

And the weight of my thoughts.


As I write...

I reveal myself...

and my misery.


These words are the battle I fight to exist...

To live...

And to grow.


As they reach your eyes...

The luxury of ignoring, hiding or running...

Disappears.

Once I have spilled myself onto the page...

It's no longer plain...

It's full of my pain.

I am exposed...

They are out...

It is real.


Words of truth from moments of agony...

And there is no going back...

Only moving forward.


These words roll around in my head...

And I must meet them...

If I choose to tackle my grief.


Obsessively I look back...

Scrutinizing what I have written...

Almost attempting to discriminate between fact and fiction.


Pulling back layers...

In an attempt to peer into my emotions...

From a rational place outside of myself.


They begin to separate from my psyche...

As I attempt to judge them as authentic...

Or as simply an invented paranoia.


These are hours spent analyzing...

What I have said, thought and felt...

And they read like a map.


They acknowledge where I have been...

But more importantly...

Where I intend to go.

What I Have Become...

What I have become...

No one should have to be...


What I have lost...

No one understands but me...

What I have endured...

No one should have to see...

Missing Pieces

It's difficult living as half a puzzle.

I spend everyday feeling so incomplete...so unfinished.

But just eight months ago...I was complete...finished...and happy.

For 26 years I searched for the missing pieces to complete my life...

And I found them in Susan.

Laughter...

Compassion...

Hope...

Acceptance...

Love...

But suddenly they've been knocked off the table...lost.

No matter where I look...

They're missing.

Y

Why?