Progress

December 23, 2022

These past six months have given me a lot of insight into me, my life, my “circumstance”. I realize I’m not the only person in the world to have lost someone who’d been in their lives for as long as they were. But I am the only one who is living my life and feeling my feelings so, bear with me please.

When my journey began as a widow, a friend gave me a journal one day, right before we sat down for a lunch date with a couple other friends. It is a beautiful hardback journal with a cover colored in gold and simply, but aptly labeled “Thoughts”. I held it for a while after receiving it and stared at it a while, too, before I actually began writing in it.

I’ve since written many things in it; quotes from other people and lyrics from songs, doodles here and there and of course, there are also my own words and random fleeting thoughts, too. Some of it is just word salad, a group of words that for some may not make any sense, but for me, right then and there when I scribbled them down, the words meant everything. They still do.

One of the more recent topics I jotted down was on being okay. So, here we go.  

A friend of mine told me a while back that eventually, I would be okay. That time would be the healer. That time would also be the thing that would feel like forever and never seem to reveal the other side of the mountain. At that point in this journey, I doubted I’d ever feel okay again.

Yet here I am. I did get to the top of a proverbial hill the other day and saw the scenery around me and realized, I am okay. I AM okay. More quietly? I? I am okay. And I don’t know quite yet how to feel about that.

I didn’t stop living. This is my new chapter. I am learning what I like, I am learning what I don’t like and sometimes I feel guilty at this new-found realization of being okay; of being alive and seeking continued growth. That,  I’m sure, is common. But yet, I do feel at times I should quell those thoughts of feeling good, of feeling okay.

I know, weird, but hey, this is ME after all.

Approaching the holidays quickly now, just days away, I’m not feeling as “bad” as I thought I’d feel.

That is an odd sensation. Maybe this is the acceptance part of the stages one goes through when life tosses a grenade their way. It’s the Oh okay, here we are, this is the new you. You can accept it, you can deny it, you can scrunch it up in a ball and try to throw it away, but this is now your life.

I’ve chosen to live it and see where it takes me and yes, I do feel okay.

I am sure that I will continue to feel the ebb and flow of life; the ups and downs of hills as they come my way, but right now? I am okay.

Do we say enough?

Monday, December 5, 2022

Do we say enough?

Today is the day before the six-month mark since Brandon died. I’ve been keeping busy, but a song just came on in the background and I started paying attention to the words and reflecting. Now, that I’m thinking about the words, let me say the following…

If I’d known what I knew the day before, the day I left the hospital and went home for the last time as a couple and not a single which I became in the wee hours of the next morning, would I have done things differently? I wonder…

Do we say enough to those we love and care for? Do we share enough with people we care about so that they know unequivocally what an IMPACT they have on our lives? Do we speak the words clearly, slowly and with certainty so that people understand how much they mean to us?

We should.

Towards the end of the day, Sunday, June 5^th, I was getting tired, cranky; I still had to get stuff set up when I got home for the item’s hospice was bringing for Brandon’s discharge and then get some rest before getting back up early the next day to be there in advance of his surgery. It was almost 7 PM and I had at least 45 to 50 minutes of drive time. That meant I’d get home around 8, eat dinner super late. House stuffs were being neglected, but what do you do?

He'd had an agitated day that day and yeah, I was feeling a bit frustrated, too. Lots of things had built up to that day. Three weeks of hospitalization, his health was declining at an alarming rate, I was running out of steam, he was dying, and I couldn’t do a damn thing to stop any of it.

When I left that night, I’d started getting ready about an hour before so he would know clearly that I was leaving. I always started slowly so he had it in his head that I was leaving that last week he was alive. He’d usually start almost pleadingly asking me to stay longer, but the last two nights he was alive, he’d fall asleep while I was packing stuff up and tidying up his room.

I woke him up that Sunday night, the 5^th of June and said softly, ‘hey babe? I’m leaving, I’ll be back first thing in the morning though before your surgery’  (we didn’t even have a time for surgery at that point, the whole thing was a “cluster”) But, I said my piece and was waiting on his response before I left. 

He blinked his eyes open, focused on me, smiled dreamily, and said ‘Okay, love you,’  then slowly closed his eyes again.

I planted a kiss on his forehead, hugged him gently and told him I loved him, too and with my stuff, walked out.

That was the last time I saw my husband “alive”. A whole half a year ago. I cannot believe that it has been that long ago. It feels like a lifetime has passed, but at the same time? Like it was just yesterday.

Do we say enough? we should. Fool that I was, I thought I had more time. Now, I know there will never be enough time for things unless we do them or say the things we feel in our hearts and in our heads.

So, to all my family, to all my friends – new and old, to all the people IN my life, I do cherish you all. You’ve made a huge impact on these last six months. The few moments, the brief or long conversations, the time spent with me in person “after”? They all helped get me through this half of a year.

Say enough, say it all, say something, just say it.