When I was younger, my mother told me how her father’s brother had been killed in World War II. My grandfather had also been in that war, but he had survived. Their mother, my great-grandmother, went into mourning when her son died. From that point on, she wore long black dresses and she never cut her hair again. This was her way of grieving for her son who had died. It’s understandable that she went into a mourning period as everyone who loses a loved one does. What wasn’t rational to me though is that she remained in that same mourning period for the rest of her life, which was another 45 or so years.

I only met that great-grandmother a few times in my life. I can remember feeling her sadness every time I did see her. I didn’t understand that sadness when I was younger, but I definitely understand it now. Her heart was broken into a million little pieces when her son died and she didn’t know how to put it back together again. Maybe she thought it couldn’t, or shouldn’t, be done.

Over the years I thought about my great-grandmother and how her life must have been living in that perpetual state of mourning. How did she have the mental and emotional strength to get up out of bed each and every morning all those years when she was so full of sadness and grief? Did she ever laugh or smile again? Did she ever again have any moments where happiness took the place of her sadness, if only for a brief time? Did anything at all bring her anything that resembled joy anymore?

I’m not sure if she ever experienced any of the things above again, but I do know that she stayed in that state of mourning for the rest of her life. She unpacked her bags of grief over her son’s death and she lived there till the day she died herself. That breaks my heart because so much of her life was spent in that dark and lonely place. Her life could have been so much different had she never unpacked those bags, or at least packed them back up again after they had served their purpose. But, she did neither of those things.

My great-grandmother robbed herself of living her life because the life she was living was only for someone who was dead. Not only did she rob herself, but she also robbed the people around her…..her family, her friends, and any others who she crossed paths with. They were all the losers in it because no one wins when you remain in that place of sadness and grief.

How different would her life had been had she not permanently unpacked those bags of grief? What great things could she have accomplished had she not stayed there? How would the lives of the people who loved her been different? Would the relationships with those people have been closer and warmer? Would my mother and her children have had a closer relationship with her instead of only seeing her a handful of times throughout our lifetimes?

How different things would have been had she been present for herself and others instead of living every day solely for someone who had died so long ago. To me, it all seems like a terrible tragedy. I’m sure that her son would not have wanted her to live that way. He would have wanted her to be happy and not live a life filled with sorrow over his death.

As the first anniversary of Kenny’s death rolled around a few weeks back, I took a lot of time to reflect on the past year and how the journey through it was. It was literally the worst year of my whole entire life. I have never experienced such raw emotional pain and more often than not, I did not think I would make it through. But…..I did make it through it. I survived it. I came out on the other side of it a much stronger person than I was when I went into it, and for that I am grateful.

I spent that year in my own heavy mourning, much like my great-grandmother did over her son’s death. I came to understand firsthand the pain she felt and it was brutal. Hopelessness, despair, and grief was front and center for me for the entire time. It’s something I would never wish on another living soul. I did a hell of a lot of work on moving through that grief and processing as much of it as I could and it was excruciating. I’m not done with that working through and processing either, and I don’t think I will ever be 100% done with it as you don’t ever really heal completely from your loved ones death. But, I’ve come a long, long way in that year from where I started out at.

The difference between my great-grandmother and me is that I did not unpack and live in that state of mourning. It was only a temporary destination for me while hers was her final destination and it lasted more than 45 years. I refuse to allow her fate to be my fate. I won’t do it. I will break that ancestral cycle. I will live my life for myself, for my children, for my grandchild, and for the other people in my life. I won’t shutter myself away and hide from the world because I’m hurting from Kenny’s death. He wouldn’t want that life for me. He would, he does, want me to be happy. It would break his heart for me to unpack my bags of grief and permanently live there in that state of sadness. I can’t do that, not to myself, or anyone, but especially to him. The best way to honor Kenny’s life is to live my own life for me and to not remain permanently in that dark place that my great-grandmother did for the rest of her life. I won’t die a long, slow death from a broken heart like she did. I’m choosing to live instead.

Yesterday was one year since Kenny died. One whole, entire year. That year went by faster than the blink of an eye. The days turned into weeks and the weeks turned into months. There’s a good bit of that time that I have no memory of. I guess that’s because of the trauma experienced from his death and my brain won’t let me remember a lot of it. That might not be a bad thing honestly. That year also creeped by painfully slow. At times it was like waiting an eternity for the hand on the clock to tick to the next second. The sound of those slow ticks echoed inside my head with a deafening loudness that would drive even the most mentally sound person insane.

I’ve learned a great deal about myself, other people, life, and pretty much everything else in this past year. The learning from this whole experience isn’t over by any means, and there’s still miles to go in the process, but as the calendar has flipped through the last 12 months I can now look back and see things more as an observer rather than an unwilling participant.

I learned that I’m so much stronger than I ever imagined I was or ever could be. I always thought of myself as a weak person in all ways, but in this last year I’ve grown so much stronger. Becoming a stronger person is never a bad thing, but this certainly isn’t the way I ever wanted that to happen. This is one of those times where being strong is the only real choice there is. The only other alternative is to just lay down and allow all the ugliness you’re going through to wholly and completely consume you. Likewise, you’re either strong, or you die. I don’t think there’s any in-between there. I have to choose to allow the strong to fill the emptiness left behind after Kenny’s death because there’s two adult children and a grandchild who need me here and not over there with Kenny, not just yet.

I learned what a whole new level of emotional pain feels like…..one I have never, ever before felt and one I didn’t think was possible. I learned how grief and trauma can be interwoven into this awful monster you can’t control or banish to the shadows. I learned how that monster can rear its ugly head up without any warning and spiral you back down into the dark pit you just clawed your way out of. I learned just how deep that pit really is. I learned how hard and difficult it is to try and climb out of it each time you fall back down into it.

I learned what true hopelessness and despair feels and looks like and felt every bit of it viscerally. I learned that this very same hopelessness and despair is your own and not everyone can or will understand it, and some refuse to even try to. Those that make that refusal put a timeline on the grief you’re experiencing and expect you to return to your old self after the clock strikes midnight on their schedule of how you should be moving through your grieving process.

I learned that the grief process is definitely NOT linear. You don’t work through the first stage, and then the second, and then the third, and so on. No, it just does not work that way. You absolutely will bounce all over the stages of grief and you have no control over it, none whatsoever. You have no choice but to ride it all out.

I learned just how badly my heart could hurt. Not just for myself, but for my son, my daughter, and my grandson. I learned that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t make their hurt go away. Being such an extreme empath I absorb their pain as my own, and it exponentially compounded the pain I was feeling myself.

I learned that some things I thought were important before have no meaning to me anymore. I don’t care about them any longer and I wonder why I ever did before. I’ve let those things go, both mentally and tangibly. On the flip side of that, I’ve learned that some things that weren’t as important to me before are so much more important now. They’ve been moved up into the top positions of the priorities list whereas the ones I prioritized before fell off that list.

I learned how utterly cruel some people can be to you. They know what you’ve been through and what you’ve lost, yet they just take that knife and plunge it deeper and deeper into your soul, cutting away more and more of you with each strike. They do it with malice and without any regard to the suffering of another human being. I’ve worked hard to forgive those people in my heart and to release them from my life. The door is now permanently closed on those relationships. I wish them well…..but over there.

I learned how incredible and selfless some other people can be. They’re the ones who have stood beside me and behind me, holding me up when I couldn’t stand on my own. They didn’t turn away from me at the lowest point in my life, but turned toward me instead. They surrounded me and formed a protective circle around me. They acted as guardians for me, doing their best to shield me from the hurt that others tried to inflict upon me. Some of those people were already there in my life, but some appeared out of the woodwork. God knows who you need, when you need them, and He sends them to you…..all in the divine timing of His choosing.

I learned that it’s okay to ask for help from others when you can’t go at it alone. I learned that it’s not a sign of weakness to ask for that help, but a sign of strength instead because you recognize you need help. I learned that those who truly care will always show up for you, no matter what.

I learned just how precious life itself is and not to take things for granted like I once did before. Nothing in our lives is guaranteed except the fact that we will all die one day. It’s just like the tattoo the waitress had on her arm at dinner the night before Kenny had his cardiac arrest–“Every day is a gift, not a given”.

I learned that sometimes people die so much sooner than you ever expected them to and that “one day” turns into never. I learned the true meaning of the phrase “Woulda, shoulda, coulda” after continuously beating myself up for the things that I/we didn’t do that we said we were going to do but now it’s too late. I learned that I can still do those things, either by myself or with someone else, but they won’t be the same without Kenny there.

I learned that I’m an entirely different person now than I was a year ago. It was a long, slow gradual change, and one I didn’t notice until reflecting back on the year. This past 365 days has been a journey I never wanted to take the first step on. I didn’t take this journey willingly; it was forced upon me. As with any journey you descend upon, you don’t come out of it as the same person you were when you went into it. You are profoundly changed, in every way a person can change. You act different, you think different, you even look different. It’s almost like you shed the skin you had been living in before and emerged as something completely unlike that which you used to be. You’ve undergone a dramatic metamorphosis, inside and out.

I learned that I don’t have to accept the things that people tell me of how life will be; that I can change the outcome of what my future looks like by sheer willpower on my part. The second year after losing my husband won’t be worse than the first one, no matter how many other widows tell me it will be. I can’t even wrap my brain around how that can even be true because I’ve just survived the absolute worst year I’ve ever lived through. I refuse to take ownership of that statement or claim that to be my fate. I will not let that happen. I absolutely refuse to.

I learned that there will be a day sometime in the future where the hurt I feel will soften and the traumatic memories of the events 365 days ago will be overtaken by the happier memories of the 35 1/2 years Kenny and I had together. I learned that one day somewhere down the line that I will finally be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel, even if I doubted it existed.

I learned firsthand what the metaphor of the Phoenix bird is…..one that builds its own funeral pyre and as it lays down to die on the wood it bursts into flames and is consumed by the fire. It then rises back up from the ashes after its apparent annihilation to be reborn into a stronger and more beautiful version of its former self. I learned that Kenny’s death was the fire that consumed me and caused the death of the person I was before, but that his death also brought about my own rebirth into a completely different person.

I learned that his death was the storm and that no matter how broken and battered I felt I conquered that storm and survived it. I learned that the saying “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” really is true. I learned that after surviving the last 365 days that I can survive any fucking thing that life throws at me. I learned that before, the fire and the storm was an external force that tried to destroy me but that in that process, I then became both the fire and the storm myself.

I learned that a person who has healed themselves from their own pain makes the best person to help others heal. I learned that Kenny’s death brought me a purpose and that purpose was to lead others through their own journey of healing from their emotional pain. I learned that I can and will help them through that dark process because I’ve been to that place called Hell and I know what it feels like to exist there in all of its horror. I learned that because I’ve been in that Hell and emerged from it as a survivor that I can go back in carrying buckets of water for those who are still consumed by the fire that threatens to destroy them. I know all of this because I learned it for myself in the last 365 days of my life.

Today is that day…..the one I’ve been dreading for the last year. It’s been exactly one year since you died. This day has hung over my head like a noose and I just wanted it to come and go as fast as it could.

This has been the fastest, slowest year I’ve ever lived through. It’s also been the absolute worst one in my life. This past year is the one that completely broke me.

There’s been so many moments in the last year that I thought to myself How can you be gone? You were JUST here. You literally were…..just…..here.

I’ve also had moments in the last year where I forgot you were dead. I would see something that I knew you’d like and want to get it for you but then remember No, I can’t do that. He’s not here.

I’d find a funny meme on Instagram and want to send it to you because you’d laugh at it just as much as I did but then remember…..you’re gone.

I’d wake up in the middle of the night and expect to hear you breathing in the bed next to me and realize your side of the bed was empty.

I’d look out the kitchen window waiting to see your truck pull in the driveway after work and then remember your truck won’t ever be out there again because it’s now in Colorado with our son.

I look at my phone and expect to hear Rock Me Like A Hurricane by The Scorpions playing when you called but realize I’ll never again hear that ringtone because you can’t call me from where you’re at now.

I see peanut M&M’s in the store and think to myself I should grab you a pack of them because you loved them and then remember you won’t be at home for me to give them to you.

I automatically walk down the tool aisle every time I’m at Ross to see if there are any small tool items there you might want and then remember you don’t need any tools anymore.

A year later, I still do and think so many things like I did before because I was always thinking of you in whatever I did.

A few days ago I put a pair of my shoes in the shoe holder in the hallway and saw your work boots sitting there and it hit me right at that exact moment that they’ve been sitting there, untouched by you, for an entire year. That moment felt like the scene in a horror movie where the person is standing at the end of a long hallway that you can’t see the other end of and all of a sudden the hallway gets shorter and comes right up into the person’s face. Even though I’m consciously aware that a whole year has gone by since you died, something about seeing those boots sitting there right at that very moment brought home the realization that an entire year has passed.

I started to cry in the hallway and told our daughter what had just happened and that I wondered if that meant it was time to either give the boots away or put them in the back of the closet. She said that I didn’t have to do either and if I wanted to leave them there then do just that. I said that a part of me wanted to just rip the band-aid off and move them or give them away just so it would be over and done with. I think I’m probably going to move them to the closet now so I don’t have to look at them every day. I think for now that’s the best choice for me.

I look at pictures on the fridge and on my phone every day so the memory of what every part of your face looked like won’t fade from my memory. I watch videos of you on my phone for the same reason as well as being able to hear your voice. I don’t want to ever forget what your voice sounded like or that distinct chuckle we all loved to hear when you laughed. I don’t want to forget anything, not ever.

I want to wrap the memory of every single little thing about you in a carefully protected box that can’t and won’t ever be destroyed. More than that though, I want for you to be back here in the physical form with me, our children, and our grandson, right where you should be, instead of over there, on the other side. I just don’t understand how you can possibly be gone though because you were just here…….you were literally just here.

Your birthday is tomorrow. You would have been 59 years old. Most people were surprised when you told them how old you were. You never looked your age, even though you worked outdoors your whole life. You had a baby face and an eternal youth inside you. Maybe that’s one of the things that I loved about you from the moment I met you because I felt the same way myself. I’ve always said I’m 22 in my own mind, no matter what my chronological age is. They say that youth is a state of mind and I really do believe that.

I spent the last 36 birthday’s of your life with you. Tomorrow will the first one I won’t see you lying next to me in the bed and say “Happy birthday, Kenny! I love you!” when you first wake up, and then kiss you all over your face. I’ll still say it, but you won’t be here, at least not in the physical sense. I hope you can hear me up in Heaven in the clouds when I do say it. I hope you’ll catch the hugs and kisses I throw up there to you and send ones back down to me.

I can’t even remember what we did last year on your birthday. I don’t know if we went out to eat somewhere or if we stayed home. I can’t remember if I gave you a gift or a card because we didn’t always do that each holiday or birthday. Over the years gifts and cards became much less important than just being in one another’s presence. Gifts and cards are expendable. The memories of time spent together is where the real treasures lie at.

Some years on your birthday you went surfing at the beach. Paddling out into the ocean on a surfboard was something you loved to do since you were about 8 years old. The water was where you found your calm serenity. No other place on Earth did that for you. In the last ten years or so you hadn’t really done any surfing and I know you really missed it.

I told you many times that walking barefoot on the sand was a way to ground yourself and that’s something you really needed to do. I said so often that we needed to go walk barefoot on the beach together but we just never did. That’s one of my biggest regrets since you died–that we didn’t do that one thing that would have brought you so much peace and joy.

I wonder if your birthday in Heaven this year will be spent paddling out into the clear blue water on a surfboard? Will you sit on your board in quiet anticipation, waiting for the perfect wave to swell up behind you? When that waves comes, will you paddle as fast as you can and then hop up on your feet and ride it all the way to the shore? Will you hold your hand down into the water as your board carries you through the tube? Will you shake the water out of your thick, curly red hair like you always did when you came back up to the surface at the end of that ride? Will you repeat this same thing over and over again until sheer exhaustion takes over and your arms feel numb?

I’d like to think that Heaven is to each one of us what we perceived it to be while we were still alive–that it encompasses every minute aspect of what we truly loved to do in life. Whatever brought us joy and happiness is what our own personal Heaven has to be because one of the definitions of Heaven is “a place, state, or experience of supreme bliss“. Isn’t that what Heaven is? That’s what I’ve always heard it is.

Maybe every day in Heaven is your birthday. Maybe you surf in the vast ocean every single day up there and you live in an eternal state of peace and serenity like you did while you were surfing down here on Earth. Maybe that’s what birthday celebrations up in Heaven look like. I sure hope they do for you.

I’ve written about the stages of grief many times over the last 10 and a half months and how I go back and forth between them. I feel like I finally reached the stage of acceptance that Kenny is dead and he’s never coming back in the physical form a little over a month ago. But, even though I’ve accepted the fact that he’s dead I still bounce around all over the other stages.

One minute I’m so full of grief over his death that I can’t stop crying. The next minute something happens that I never had to do or take care of when he was alive and I’m full of anger and rage at him for dying. The whole process of this back and forth between the stages of grief is maddening. I feel like the steel ball inside a pinball machine ricocheting from one bumper to another. This pinging back and forth feels violent sometimes.

Most days the depression stage of grief is my constant companion. I may not always appear that way to others, but it’s definitely always there just under the surface. I had someone tell me this past week that I seemed like I was doing great in light of the fact that my husband had died. I told her point blank that most of that appearance of “doing great” is fake, and really, it is. I guess this is something that people who are in the grief process do–pretend to be happy and okay, when in reality they are not.

There are a lot of days when the anger stage of grief is front and center. I think that these days are just as bad as the depression stage days, or perhaps even worse. Anger is a strong emotion that can sometimes bring out the worst in a person and it certainly has in me on my anger days. I’ve screamed and yelled at Kenny for dying. I’ve cussed at him too, quite nastily I will add. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve screamed “Why did you fucking die and leave me here all alone??!!!” Of course when I have these moments I immediately feel the guilt stage of grief right afterwards because I don’t hate him, I love him, and I always will.

I had a lot of those angry days this week. My car battery was dead when I went to leave work on Tuesday and I had to call my daughter to come and jump it. As I sat in the car waiting for her I felt so low for having to depend on one of my kids to come and help me. I should be self-sufficient and not have to depend on anyone for anything, but I’m not. Since Kenny died I’ve had to depend on so many people to help me and it makes me feel one million times worse about the situation I’m in. It’s during these times when I’m the angriest at Kenny for dying.

When I went to get a new battery tonight at the auto store the man who put the new one in said to me, “There’s a whole lot of corrosion here” I told him, “Yes, I’m well aware of that, and that’s one thing my husband should have taken care of when he was alive but he’s dead, so…..” The man just looked at me. I think he was uncomfortable at the comment I made but it’s what came out of my mouth right at that moment.

As I stood there for over half an hour waiting for the man to replace my battery I thought about the times since Kenny died that I’ve been so angry at him for dying and leaving me. I couldn’t help it–the memories of all those times just flooded my brain and I couldn’t push them down no matter how hard I tried. I felt that anger boil right up to the surface, again.

I thought about how my inspection sticker had expired several years ago and the tires wouldn’t pass inspection. There was a broken stud on one of the wheels that Kenny just kept putting off getting fixed. The stud needed to be replaced before we got the tires replaced. Those two things needed to be taken care of for a few years but he just never got around to doing them. I was finally able to buy four new tires this year and had someone replace them for me.

I got the car inspected, too, but I did have to put up with the techs there trying to tell me I needed $1500 worth of stuff done on the car right away. They see a woman by herself and think they can take advantage of the fact that there is no man with her. I declined the $1500 worth of work, most of it being things that don’t need to be done now and them being grossly overpriced.

My car needed an oil change and got that done myself, too. The next thing I have to work on getting done is new brakes. I for sure won’t be getting the place that did the inspection to do that. I’ll probably buy the brake pads myself and pay someone the labor to put them on.

My angry days haven’t all been car related. There have been plenty of days when personal stuff has left me feeling full of despair, both at the situation itself and the fact that I have to go through it alone without Kenny here. I don’t have him here anymore for emotional support and it isn’t always easy to travel that particular road alone. Most days that one thing is very hard to do.

I had to walk into a courtroom all by myself in December, almost two months after Kenny died. I had to stand in front of the judge alone while the witness in my case lied under oath about what she heard the defendant say, even though she told me in front of my kids, on two different occasions in the two months after he died, that she did hear the defendant say it. I lost my case because of her lie but I did appeal it. I’ll have to go back to court alone again next year when that appeal is finally heard.

I’ve had to handle other personal things alone that Kenny would have been able to help with, even if that help was nothing more than letting me cry into his shirt as he hugged me and told me it would be okay. I think no longer having that one thing there is one of the hardest things to handle about him being gone. We all need a significant other who will be there for us in this exact way. When that person is ripped away from you there is no more alone feeling than that. It’s brutal.

I can’t stand the anger stage of grief. It drags you down into a dark pit you feel you can’t climb out of. The guilt that comes after the anger leaves you feeling emotionally drained. This whole thing is a vicious circle and I want off of this ride but I can’t, not quite yet. There’s still more emotional pain to process before that happens.

The cycle of life works exactly in this way–the end of one thing is always the birth of something else. Although that ending can be bittersweet, and often very painful, it has to come about so whatever is to come next can happen.

In the summer of 2001, Kenny and I bought a brand new Toyota 4-Runner. Years before we had driven a 1987 4-Runner I bought before we got married. After we sold the ’87 truck, we bought used vehicles. We were so happy to finally be able to buy something new instead of used, and this was the first new vehicle we had ever bought together.

Kenny picked the Dorado Gold colored truck out of the ones on the dealer’s lot. He liked that one better than the silver one. I drove the truck home with the kids and he drove our other SUV. I remember telling the kids that they were absolutely not allowed to put stickers on the window of this truck like they had done to the other vehicles.

We bought this new truck for me to drive as Kenny had his own for work. The booster seats went in for the kids and they filled the pockets on the back of the seats with books and toys. They each claimed their own side of the back seat; Kaitlin on the left, and Gage on the right. They were pretty excited to have a new truck to ride in.

We put a lot of happy miles on that truck. We made weekend trips to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, riding up the beach on the wet sand. I never did the driving on the beach because I was too scared to. Kenny always did as he had been driving on the beach in four wheel drive for years. I remember one time we were driving back late from Carova Beach and the tide was coming in. The water swirled around the tires and we were afraid we’d get swept out into the ocean. It was nerve wracking for me and the kids were scared and crying, but Kenny knew what he was doing and we made it back down the beach safely.

In 2004 we packed the back of that truck to the ceiling and drove it all the way to Disney World and back. We stopped in North Carolina on the way there to visit my sister and her husband and in Georgia on the way back to meet my uncle and his family. We were gone for 10 days and we had the best time. It was the only real family vacation we ever took.

I drove that truck to take the Girl Scout’s camping, with the back of it packed with all our supplies to survive a weekend in a cabin in the woods. There were other trips made to the Carolinas and Georgia for reunions and visits to family. That 4-Runner took us everywhere we needed to go and it did so faithfully.

In 2015 the transmission in Kenny’s Dodge Ram went out and we didn’t have the money to fix it. He sold it to a mechanic and started driving the 4-Runner. The back seats got folded down and he immediately filled up the back cargo area with all his tools. He pulled his work trailer with the Toyota, too. Kenny’s persona was all over that truck in no time and it was never really my truck again.

After Kenny died I was on the fence about selling the truck or keeping it. I finally decided to keep it just to have a second vehicle in case I needed it. Our son Gage eventually asked if he could have it and I told him that he could, because that’s what his dad had wanted. Kenny and Gage used to talk a lot about how they’d like to restore the Toyota back to its former glory. They sent pictures back and forth to each other on Instagram of 4-Runners that had been fixed up. Talking about that truck was a favorite subject of conversation between them and I think it helped the miles between them seem a little less than they really were.

Gage decided to have the truck shipped to him in Colorado on a car carrier. He wanted to have it looked at first to see what needed to be done to it mechanically. Gage had me drop the 4-Runner off at a mechanic who we trusted that had worked on it before. He said it would be an honor to look it over as he’d really liked Kenny a lot and he appreciated us giving him our business when he was first starting out. After I got the truck back I cleaned it out. There were so many random screws and nails tucked down in the side pockets of the doors that I had to be careful sticking my hands in them. I left a few things in the truck that I thought Gage might want. One was the personalized license plate we had on our first 4-Runner in 1993 that said KSAXTON on it. I told Gage he should hang it on his wall.

Gage made all the arrangements for the transport and when the day came for me to meet the car carrier to load the 4-Runner up it was so much harder than I had anticipated it would be. I left work and drove home to switch vehicles. As I got in Kenny’s truck I sat there for a minute and just let all the memories of us driving it over the last nearly 21 years flood into my head. The tears welled up in my eyes and spilled down my face. This was the end of an era for Kenny and me being the owners of this truck.

I started the engine and pulled out of the driveway. As I drove up the road I realized this would be the last time I drove it, at least here in Virginia. It would be the last time I’d breathe in the distinct smell of Kenny in it, a mixture of sweat and wood. When I finally do make it out to Colorado to see Gage that smell will be long gone. It’s a smell I wish I could bottle up and keep forever.

When I got to the parking lot to meet the car carrier my friend was already there waiting for me so she could give me a ride back. I got out of the truck and told the two men who were transporting it to Colorado that I was sorry but I was probably going to be very emotional about this. I was crying as I told them the truck belonged to my husband who had died months earlier, and that I was giving it to our son because that’s what his dad had wanted. They said they understood and that the truck was going to where it was supposed to go. I took pictures of the 4-Runner sitting there in the parking lot next to the car carrier so I’d remember what it looked like on the last day I saw it in Virginia. I got in the car with my friend and cried harder.

That almost 21 year old Toyota 4-Runner had over 198,000 miles on it when I handed it over to the transport people. Most vehicles would have been long dead by that time, but not our 4-Runner. Toyota’s are good, reliable trucks. Kenny knew this firsthand as he had driven the 1982 Toyota long bed 4-wheel drive truck he had when I met him in 1986 for nearly 275,000 miles.

It took two full days for those two men to drive that car carrier roughly 1800 miles across the country and deliver that truck into our son’s hands, the new owner. I worried the whole time that something would happen and it wouldn’t make it in one piece. Thankfully that didn’t happen and Gage took delivery of it on a Monday morning. He sent me pictures of it on the car carrier and later parked in his driveway.

The night before I drove the truck to meet the car carrier, I wrote Gage a letter. I reminded him of some of the great times we had in that truck and I told him of things to look forward to in the future. I tucked the letter in the glovebox for him to find when he got the 4-Runner in Colorado, when the birth of its new life there begins.

Dear Gage,

By the time you read this letter Dad’s truck will have made its way across the country to its new home with you in Colorado.  Dad and I had wanted for a long time to restore the 4-Runner and give it to you.  I think mostly it was Dad because I think there’s just something about a father wanting to pass his truck down to his son.  You having his truck would make Dad happy.  In all the sadness and grief we’ve all experienced in the last six months this is one thing I can do to make someone feel a little less sad. 

I hope every time you drive the truck you’ll remember all the good and happy times we spent in it as a family.  Driving back home the night we bought it and you and Kaitlin sitting in the back seat so excited to have a new truck.  The trips to the Outer Banks, to Sandbridge, to visit family members out of state, and the long drive we made to Disney World.  Driving on the beach in Corolla and almost getting stuck in the wet sand with the waters coming up to the tires. Driving to Gigi & Jesse’s house with River sitting in the seat between you and Kaitlin.  Short drives to Boy Scout and Girl Scout meetings.  Riding to baseball practice and watching you play baseball.  Driving to Busch Gardens.  Driving to Grandma & Papa’s house.  

I hope you’ll remember learning to drive first in the Toyota and then driving Dad’s Dodge Ram that was much bigger.  

I hope you know that every time you get in the driver’s seat to drive the truck that Dad will be riding in the passenger’s seat as your constant companion.  Every time you turn on the radio, he’ll be singing off key and making up his own words to the songs. Every time you open the hood to work on the engine, he’ll be standing next to you with his hand on your shoulder, telling you what he thinks needs to be done.  Every time you check the air in the tires, he’ll be telling you how much air to put in.  Every time you put it in 4-wheel drive he’ll be telling you that you have to be careful with it.  Every restoration you make to bring the Toyota back to its former glory, Dad will be right there helping you, just like a father does with the truck he hands down to his son. 

I wish this wasn’t the way Dad’s truck was being handed down to you.  I wish he was here to put the keys in your hand himself and tell you to take good care of his truck. I wish things were different but they’re not.  I wish at the very least I was able to be there in person to hand you the keys myself but that isn’t possible either.  

I hope you’ll love the Toyota just as much as me and Dad did.  I hope you’ll make your own happy memories in it like we did.  And if you have a son one day, I hope you’ll hand it down to him just as I’m handing it down to you……because that’s what Dad wanted.

I love you, always and forever…….and Dad does too,

Love, Mom

Gage sends me pictures and videos of the 4-Runner sometimes. I get to see the roads Kenny’s truck is now driving on and the breathtaking scenery of the Colorado mountains. In the video below I got to see our son’s hands on the steering wheel of his dad’s truck as he made his way up a dirt road towards the mountains. I cried when I saw that he left the business cards Kenny stuffed in the dash to cover up the light that always stays on. I told Gage this made me cry and he said he was never going to take those cards from where his dad put them so long ago.

Even though Kenny couldn’t drive that truck across the country to put the keys to it in our son’s hands himself, I know he’s up there in Heaven in the clouds looking down with a big smile on his face knowing that it’s right where he wanted it to be. Gage will make lots of new memories of his own in that truck as he drives it on the many adventures that lie in front of him, and Kenny will be with him on every single one of them.

I’ll eventually make it out to Colorado myself to see Gage and ride in the 4-Runner again. When I do, I’ll look over at our son sitting in the driver’s seat where his dad used to sit. It’ll be hard to stop the tears from rolling down my face as I see the next generation behind the wheel. I’ll be comforted though knowing Kenny will be riding in the backseat, singing off key and making up his own words to the song playing on the radio, just like he always did when he was here driving it himself.

Years ago when we were going through a very difficult time in our lives a good friend of ours came and helped when he didn’t have to. He had been a great source of spiritual help to our family before and we appreciated it very much. After this particular time, I told him I had no idea how we could ever repay him for his kindness, for this time and from the times prior. He said one thing to me “It’s reciprocal”.

I thought about those two words a lot over the years, both in terms of this friend and life in general. It’s one of those times when something someone says to you settles deep into your soul and leaves an indelible mark there. I told this friend last year that I had never forgotten what he said so long ago and how I thought about it a lot.

Last Sunday in church the pastor told us it was National Lighthouse Day. I never knew this was a thing, but why shouldn’t it be? We have National Day Of’s for every other thing in the world so why shouldn’t lighthouses have their own day of recognition?

He talked about how we should all serve as a lighthouse for others who need someone to be a shelter for them during their personal storms. As I sat in the back pew and listened to him speak my mind was taken back to those two words my friend had said to me……It’s reciprocal.

I rolled the pastor’s words and my friend’s words around in my head as I sat there. So many times over the years I felt like I was never the lighthouse, but instead the tiny battered ship lost in the turbulent storm in the dark sea, trying desperately to find safety upon the shore that I could not see.

I felt like I was always the one needing help navigating my way through my storms and never provided safe harbor for anyone who needed it themselves. Listening to the sermon made me see things from a little different perspective.

I realized that there were times over the years that I had indeed been a lighthouse for others who needed help finding their safe harbor. That safe harbor may not have been in the same form that people had provided to me but nonetheless, I had still been able to shine a light for others who really needed it.

I thought about the spiritual gifts test I took at church a long time ago and that my strongest spiritual gift was the gift of mercy. Someone who shows mercy is deeply compassionate and is drawn to those who are suffering. That describes me perfectly and people who are suffering seem to always find me. I’ve always said it’s like I have a flashing neon sign on my forehead that says “Come and tell me all your troubles”. Maybe that flashing neon sign isn’t really that at all, but instead the brightly shining beacon of a lighthouse throwing its light out to whoever needs help finding their way to the shore through the dark storm.

As I thought even more about all the things above, I realized that I was exactly who and what the Creator had made me to be…….someone who was both the battered ship and the lighthouse for those that needed someone to lead them out of their storm. I can be that lighthouse for those that need it because I’ve found my way to the shore by the lighthouses that helped me. It’s reciprocal……just like my good friend said to me so many years ago.

A few months ago I finally reached the point in my journey through grief where I was able to stop sleeping in the bed with the last three T-shirts he ever wore. I considered this a milestone in this journey I never wanted to take and thought the darkest days of the grief and trauma were finally behind me. The last few days slapped my face and let me know that wasn’t true.

They showed me that the forward and upward movement you make can be followed by falling backwards and backsliding to where you were before. I guess you spend so much time looking back at how far you’ve come that you don’t pay enough attention to the climb that’s still ahead of you. When you make that backwards fall it’s hard to find the strength inside you to get back up and try again. You really just want to lay there in defeat.

These are the kind of days where you get sucked back down into that dark and ugly pit that doesn’t seem to end. It feels like the part in Alice In Wonderland where she falls down into the rabbit hole and she just keeps falling and falling and falling. It seems endless.

These are the kind of days where the ocean looks so much more vast and you’d welcome it if it swallowed you up. There’s a quiet peace in the water and I understand why so many people find comfort floating in it with their ears below the surface. It’s so they don’t have to hear the roar of the bottomless pit of problems they face.

These are the kind of days where I feel your absence much more deeply. A few scattered successes of trying to make my way through life without you aren’t enough to quell the feelings of failure that creeped back in these last few days. Those feelings come with an ugly taunting and they want me to know they’re my overlord now. It’s hard to tell them they’re not.

I guess my subconscious mind and body knew this backslide was coming before my waking mind did. I didn’t realize until I looked at the calendar tonight that today’s the 9th. It’s been exactly ten months to the day since you were so cruelly and unexpectedly ripped out of our lives forever. I guess that’s the reason why I’m feeling this backslide so viscerally today.

I feel like I’m standing at a precipice here. I have two choices; I can lay there in the dark abyss and let it wholly consume me, or, I can crawl my way out of it with bloodied hands and knees already covered in ten months worth of scars. Both doors come with such raw pain and I’m not sure there’s a lesser evil here. Neither door is one I want to knock on but there’s not a third door to choose from.

The night after Kenny died, our grandson Emory came home from spending the night with relatives. We couldn’t take him with us to the hospital because we didn’t want him to see his Papa lying in a hospital bed with tubes all over him and machines hooked up everywhere. Emory would have been terribly traumatized from seeing that and he wouldn’t be able to understand why his Papa wouldn’t wake up. No child should ever have to see or experience that.

We didn’t tell Emory that night that his Papa had died or what happened to him. He had just turned 4 a few weeks before and there’s no way he’d be able to comprehend what death is and the circumstances that led up to it. Kaitlin and I had talked about how we’d tell Emory that Kenny died and we were at a loss as to what to say. As much as we were all hurting we knew Emory would hurt in a much different way because he was 4 and he loved his Papa so much. The two of them were extremely close and Emory’s world would never again be the same.

When Emory came in the house that night we were all sitting in the den. Emory instinctively knew something was different and not right. He sat on the floor with his mom and dad and didn’t talk as much as he usually does. At one point he said out of the blue, “Papa’s not here”. We were surprised at his comment as we hadn’t said anything about Kenny dying in front of him.

Kaitlin asked Emory, “Where do you think he’s at?” Emory’s answer was, “He disappeared in the dark”. She then asked him what was in the dark and he replied, “The trees”. He said these things so matter-of-factly and it really stunned us. We all just looked at each other and didn’t know what to say. This 4 year old child knew his Papa wasn’t there anymore. He knew this without anyone telling him.

So, we didn’t have to tell Emory that night that Kenny died. Instead, he told us from a 4 year-old’s perspective. Kenny essentially had “disappeared in the dark” and he wasn’t ever going to be coming back.

As the days turned into weeks Emory asked about his Papa quite frequently. He asked where he was and if he was coming back. Kaitlin decided to tell him that Kenny died and went to live up in the clouds in Heaven. Emory didn’t really understand this but he accepted this answer. He talked about Kenny a lot and said so many times that he wished that his Papa could come back down from Heaven in the clouds. When he said that, we would tell him that Papa couldn’t come back down here and that Heaven up in the clouds was his home now. The look on his face when we would tell him that was of a quiet hurt. I can’t even imagine what was going through his little mind when he heard those words.

Because Emory had just turned 4 when Kenny died I knew that realistically he’d only remember him through pictures and videos. Thank goodness I took a lot of them together, even though it annoyed Kenny when I took pictures of him. I would show Emory the pictures and videos often to keep Kenny’s memory fresh in his mind. Kaitlin also had a little pillow custom made with Kenny’s picture on it. Emory calls it his “Papa pillow” and he sleeps with it.

Emory has said on several occasions that he wished he could set a trap for his Papa to come back down here from Heaven in the clouds. He says it with such conviction and I know he believes it’s something that could work. In his 4 year-old mind that’s all it would take to get Kenny back. I wish it was that easy. My heart has shattered into a million tiny pieces each time he’s said this and I have to tell him that his Papa can’t come back down here, no matter how much we all want him to.

I decided to start a habit with Emory where we throw kisses up to Kenny in Heaven in the clouds. We catch the ones he throws down to us and we put them all over our faces. We then give ourselves a big hug and throw that up there, too. We catch the hug Kenny throws back down to us and hug ourselves tightly with it. Emory likes doing this and I hope it helps keep Kenny’s memory alive within him.

Sometimes when we’re driving in the car Emory will ask me, “Is that the cloud that Papa lives at up in Heaven?” We’ll look at the different clouds and try to decide which one could be Heaven. When I asked him last week which cloud in the sky he though Heaven was in he told me it was the biggest one up there and that the smaller clouds were too little to be Heaven. I asked him what he thought was in Heaven and he told me toy trains. I guess to him that playing with toy trains is what people do after they die and go to Heaven. That must be a 4 year olds version of what Heaven is.

When I was a little girl my grandmother told me that the rays of sun coming out from the clouds was how you got up to Heaven. She died when I was 8 and every time I would see the rays of sun coming out from the clouds I’d think to my child self If I could just get to those rays of the sun I could climb up to Heaven to see her. The Stairway to Heaven is right there in front of us all, if only we could get to it.

Yesterday when I was driving to Wegmans to get a pizza for dinner like Kenny and I used to do for dinner dates, I looked up in the sky and saw the most brilliant cloud that had rays of light radiating up from behind it. Those beams of light from the sun shot out of the top of the cloud and reached upwards like the light from a lamp does shining up to the ceiling. The edges of the cloud were so bright it looked like it was electrified.

I was awe struck by this cloud and I just could not look away from it. It’s the kind of cloud you expect to hear angels blowing trumpets from. I took several pictures of it so I’d never forget how beautiful it was. I decided that this must be the cloud that Kenny lives in up in Heaven. This must be the one where Heaven is.

As I stared at this cloud and knew it was the very one where Heaven is at, and that’s where Kenny is, I realized it wasn’t an accident that I was seeing it right at that moment. Kenny was letting me know that he was still here with me and he’d be there for our dinner date, if only in spirit.

Kenny and used to go on dinner date nights at Wegmans. We would order a large pepperoni pizza and sit in the cafe part of the store and eat, and then grocery shop afterwards. We’d sit there eating our pizza for a long time, talking about everything and nothing important, all at the same time.

We would also go on dinner dates to get a hamburger and fries at Five Guys and sit in the car in the parking lot and eat it. We’d take our own drinks so we didn’t have to buy the overpriced ones there and I’d also bring our own cloth dinner napkins. I took the Celtic sea salt we use, too, because it’s better for you than the table salt they put in the bag with your food. They have the best french fries there and everyone knows that good salt makes french fries taste even better.

Sometimes we’d have our dinner date in the parking lot of Panera. Kenny would get his usual chicken salad sandwich and broccoli cheddar soup and always spill it on his shirt. He never listened to me when I told him to tuck a napkin in his collar to avoid that. I’d get a big Asian sesame salad with chicken and we’d pass it back and forth in the car to each other to share. He’d complain about how expensive Panera was for “just sandwiches” and say every single time how much he disliked their “hard ass bread” (his words, not mine). It’s funny though, he ate every bit of that hard ass bread every single time.

On other occasions, we’d get ice cream at Coldstone and sit in the car and eat it. We’d park two rows back from the building and watch everyone that came and went because Kenny and I were both people watchers. There was a Subway sandwich shop, Chinese take-out, and a nail salon and massage parlor in the same strip. We’d try and guess which place the people that pulled in the parking lot were going to. Sometimes we’d call our son who lives out of state and talk to him while we ate our ice cream and people watched. When Gage was here after Kenny died, he suggested we go and get ice cream and sit in the parking lot to people watch, just like his dad and I used to do. We did, and it made me happy and sad all at the same time.

As silly as it sounds going on a dinner date to a grocery store to eat pizza or to sit in your car of the parking lot of a restaurant to eat, it was one of mine and Kenny’s favorite things to do together. We really looked forward to it. Over the years it became less important where we went and more important that we just spent time together. We didn’t need anything fancy or expensive to have a nice night out together. We just needed each other, wherever that may be at.

I came to Wegmans to sit in the cafe and eat pizza tonight for the first time since Kenny died. I ordered a small pizza since he’s no longer here to eat twice as much as I do. To say it makes me terribly sad to sit here by myself is such an understatement. There’s an empty hole where his existence used to be. I miss having him across the table from me to talk to. I miss looking at his face that somehow managed to stay so young looking, even after spending his whole life working outdoors in the sun. I miss hearing his voice and the distinctive chuckle-laugh he had. I miss watching him eat his food so fast like he always did, and me telling him to slow down so he didn’t get heartburn. I miss every single thing about our dinner dates together.

I didn’t people watch tonight at Wegmans. I sat at the table in silence while I ate my little pizza alone. I didn’t really know what to do with myself so I sat at the table and wrote this whole blog post on my phone about how I miss having dinner dates at a grocery store and in parking lots with Kenny. I cried some too while I was writing it and hoped no one saw me wiping the tears from my eyes with the brown paper napkins. I cried because Kenny has been gone for nearly 10 months now and it still hurts like absolute hell not having him here.

In our world, it takes 9 months gestation time for the birth of another human being. In the beginning, we see that 9 months as an eternity and we wonder how we’ll ever make it through to the end. We mark off each day in the countdown till that new baby arrives. We can’t wait for that day to come.

A new baby arriving isn’t the only manner in which something is born though. New ideas are born, new relationships, new lifestyles, etc. When we think of something being born we usually associate it with something happy and joyful. But, sometimes the thing that’s being birthed isn’t something we welcome and celebrate. Sometimes the thing that’s being birthed is the acceptance of something full of sadness.

A few weeks ago was 9 months since Kenny died. Those 9 months creeped by excruciatingly slow, but also in the blink of an eye. It’s weird how times does that. It’s like how when you have a car accident–it happens fast and in slow motion, all at the same time.

In the beginning, I had no idea how I’d make it through each minute of each day. Each second was a chore to try and survive without him here. As the days and weeks went by it didn’t seem to get any easier. I bounced all over the stages of grief, yo-yoing between them with no rhyme or reason. The stage of acceptance seemed so far off in the distance I wasn’t sure I’d ever see it. It didn’t seem attainable to me, not ever.

There were moments in a lot of those days that I forgot he was dead. I might see something funny on Instagram and say to myself, I should send this to Kenny–he’ll think it’s funny. Or, I would wake up in the middle of the night or in the morning and expect to hear him breathing or see him lying next to me in the bed. But, he was never there–not anymore.

Every single one of those days of that nine months I wished I could will him back to life. It’s not like I didn’t try because I did. I have many talents but resurrecting the dead isn’t one of them. Our 4 year old grandson even had the same idea. He told me on several occasions “I wish I could set a trap for Papa so he could come down from Heaven in the clouds”. He misses Kenny so very much and he’s still struggling with his absence. He doesn’t full understand why Kenny can’t just come back down here because we want him to. Emory’s acceptance of Kenny’s death will take longer to birth than mine has. My heart breaks for him.

Coming to the acceptance stage of grief is an accomplishment, if you want to call it that. It doesn’t feel celebratory in any way-it just means that you’ve come to terms with your loved ones death. You accept the fact that they are never coming back and this is what your life looks like now. Instead of walking through each day with them physically by your side there’s just an empty space they used to occupy. That empty space is called acceptance and you quietly agree for it to take your loved one’s place in your life. Just because I’ve reached this so-called final stage of grief doesn’t mean I’m no longer grieving Kenny’s death. I’ll always grieve for him. It just means that I can finally accept the fact that he’s gone and isn’t ever coming back.

Last night I cried myself to sleep. The tears came in a steady stream right out of my eyes, across the bridge of my nose, and onto my pillow. They just kept coming-I couldn’t make them stop. They stopped when I finally fell asleep, I think. In a few hours it would be Father’s Day, and you’re not here for us to give you our silly cards and tell you how much we love and appreciate you. You’re not here because…..you’re over there, and you’re never coming back to over here.

Mother’s Day was hard enough without you here but today is even harder. I’ve looked at so many pictures of you the last few days because I wanted to be taken back to the moments in time they were taken. I wish I could step into those pictures and relive those moments. I wish I could experience being in your presence again. I wish I could touch your face again. I wish I could run my hands across your beard and see how it was perfectly made up of a mixture of copper and white. I wish I could run my fingers through your thick, curly red hair again that all the women who cut it said how beautiful it was, because it really was. I wish I could kiss your full lips again that I was always so jealous of because mine are so thin.

No matter how hard I thought any of the times in those pictures were, they are nothing compared to the hard that is now. No one ever told me when I was young and full of hope and dreams of the future that it might be like this. Why didn’t they? Plenty of people I knew back then had experienced the same painful loss as me, yet they never said a thing. Was it something you weren’t supposed to talk about? Was their pain supposed to be shut away in a dark closet where no one else but them saw and felt it? Why did they suffer in silence? Why didn’t they warn the younger ones that life will sometimes be cruel and rip everything away from you in the blink of an eye? I wish I knew the answers to these questions but I don’t.

Father’s Day with you over there hurts. I won’t lie and say it doesn’t. It doesn’t just hurt for me, it also hurts for our children. It hurts for our grandson, too, even if he’s too young to really understand what this day is about and why you acknowledge it. He just knows his Papa isn’t here anymore and he feels your loss very deeply, every day. It’s criminal that he was robbed of having you here to see him grow into adulthood. You should be here to teach him to skateboard, to surf, and to build things with wood and tools. But, you’re not, because you’re over there.

I shared a picture of you with our children on social media late last night. I wrote that today would be hard, and it is. I said that I wish I could grab ahold of you and pull you back over here from the other side. I wrote that love is eternal and transcends time and space, but that it sure doesn’t make it hurt any less. Today, I hope you feel all the love each one of us has for you and know that we are thankful and grateful for the short time we did have with you here, on this side. I hope you carry all that love inside you every second of every day and will send all your love right back down to us from your home up in the clouds in Heaven.

When I got home from the hospital the day that Kenny died I saw that my son-in-law and his mother had washed all the dirty laundry. They washed the clothes in my hamper and stripped the bed where Kenny had the heart attack and cardiac arrest and then made it back up for me. They didn’t want me to have to worry about doing that when I got home and I appreciated that. The very last thing I wanted to have to do after having to unplug my husband’s life support and let him go was to wash the sheets and remake the bed–the same sheets that the paramedics had walked on top of to get to Kenny in the bed and defibrillate him.

I put the clean clothes away, including Kenny’s T-shirts, boxers, shorts and socks. I put his clothes right back where they belonged, because I had to. I could not throw them in a Goodwill bag. His clothes stayed in his dresser for months until I could bring myself to start giving them away. Some of his clothes are still in the dresser as I’m still not ready to give all of them away just yet.

As I was putting that laundry away that evening I saw that there were three of Kenny’s T-shirts that had not gotten washed. This was an odd sense of relief for me. They were the last three T-shirts Kenny ever wore–an old Wave Riding Vehicles shirt with holes in it, one that said Aloha, Hawaii on it, and a yellow Margaritaville shirt. That yellow shirt was the very last shirt Kenny ever wore. We had gone to dinner at Outback Steakhouse the night before he had the heart attack and this was the shirt he wore. The memory of him sitting across the table from me at dinner, wearing that yellow T-shirt and his baseball hat and us talking about nothing important is seared into my memory as this night was the last time he ever spoke to me.

When I saw the three unwashed T-shirts I grabbed them up in my arms and buried my face in them, smelling Kenny’s scent on them. I immediately started to cry. I stood there in our bedroom for a while crying, breathing in the last remnants of Kenny in long, deep breaths. That night, I got into bed clutching those three T-shirts as fiercely as I could. I didn’t really sleep much; there really wasn’t any way I could after just having had the man I’d loved with every fiber in my being for the last 35 and 1/2 years ripped away from me in the most horrific way.

I slept with those T-shirts in the bed nearly every night for the last 8 months. Some nights I cried hard tears for hours all over those shirts and they were still damp the next morning. I wiped my runny nose all over them and my make-up got smeared on them, too. Some nights I hugged those shirts tightly, as if Kenny were still inside them. Some nights they laid on Kenny’s spot on the other side of the bed, untouched, but still there beside me.

In a way, I was using those three shirts as a substitute for him. It’s as stupid as it sounds, I know, thinking three T-shirts could ever take the place of a living human being. I used those three shirts as a crutch to help me make my way through my grieving process, which I’m still very much going through now. Sleeping with those three dirty shirts helped me to feel closer to Kenny and so that’s why I did it. This is one of those times where I say that I did what I had to do and I don’t care what anyone else thinks of what I did.

I have never washed those three shirts. I could never bring myself to do so. I think subconsciously I was afraid that if I did wash them Kenny’s essence would finally be gone and I didn’t want that, not yet. I’m not really sure if I ever will get to the point of washing them. If I don’t then that’s okay, and again, I don’t care what anyone else thinks about that.

Last weekend I went to a past life regression mediation at the Edgar Cayce Center. Past life regression is something I’ve been doing for almost six years. I’ve learned a lot about myself in every one of them and see repeating patterns in a lot of them. I’ve lost my husband at an early age in quite a few of my past lives, just like I have in this one. I’ve also seen members of my family and friends in these regressions. People travel through their lives in soul groups and tend to reincarnate into lives together. Kenny has been my husband in numerous past lives and we were very much soul mates to each other, just like we were in this life.

In the regression I did last Saturday I saw myself as a peasant woman in the middle ages who had lost her husband early. I saw him clutch his chest and fall to the ground as he died in front of her. Her husband was a blacksmith; a craftsman, just like Kenny was. He made all his iron creations in a covered area next to their cottage in the woods. He wore a leather apron he made himself while he was working.

The woman was so distraught over her husband dying, just like me. She went to bed every night with her husband’s dirty leather apron clutched to her chest. She cried many tears of grief into that apron because she missed him so much. I literally could feel her pain right in the middle of my heart and it hurt very badly. I was feeling her pain as my own because I’m her and she’s me and we have both suffered the very same loss of the very same person. My heart was broken witnessing this woman’s pain through my closed eyes.

I wanted to reach back across time and say to this woman “Please tell me it won’t always hurt this bad. Please tell me the pain lessens over time.” But, I can’t do that. Her time here is long gone and her story has long since ended. She can only show me what happened to her; not what is going to happen to me.

As I came out of the regression I had tears in my eyes. Those tears were for this woman and the gut wrenching pain she felt over the loss of her husband, whom she loved with all her heart. Those tears were also for me, for the loss of Kenny, who I also loved with all my heart. Those tears were for all four of us, who are really just the two of us, only in different lifetimes. I cried because we lost someone we loved so deeply. I cried because that loss was suffered much sooner than it ever should have been for both of the me’s and both of the him’s.

It took a few seconds for me to digest the images I saw in this past life regression. After I got over the initial shock of seeing my husband die at such a young age yet again, I realized that this particular past life had something to teach me-that I had repeated the pattern of using my dead husband’s article of clothing as a crutch and it was making it harder for me to finally let him go. It was a sobering realization, and one I wasn’t quite ready to accept, but I knew I needed to so I wouldn’t be stuck on a plateau in my grieving process.

I told my friend I was there with what I’d seen in my regression and that I knew it was time to stop sleeping with Kenny’s shirts in the bed with me. He isn’t here any longer and the other side of the bed doesn’t need to be occupied by his dirty T-shirts. I don’t want to be alone the rest of my life but keeping those shirts in the bed as a crutch will certainly bring that into fruition. You have to make room in your life for what you eventually want to be in it.

That night, I slept with the T-shirts in the bed one more time…..just once more. I hugged them tight like they were Kenny himself. I said to him in my head that it was time to let him go. The next night I put the shirts on the cedar chest at the end of my bed. I haven’t slept with them any more. Those shirts might stay on the cedar chest for a bit until I decide where to put them. I won’t get rid of them-that I’m unwilling to do. Maybe they’ll be made into a T-shirt blanket with some of his other favorite T-shirts. I’m sure our grandson would love to cuddle up with a blanket made from the shirts that belonged to the Papa he loved so much.

I guess this is the acceptance part of grief; that part where you finally and fully accept that your loved one isn’t ever coming back. I’m wiping tears from my eyes as I type these words because there’s such a finality to it. I want to bury my face into those shirts and wipe my tears away with them, but I won’t. It still feels very much unfair that he left all of us, and so young. The pain we all feel still hurts like absolute hell and perhaps it always will. The hole left in our hearts from his death will never be filled because that space was just for him, and him only. But I think I’ve come to a place of making peace with his absence, if peace is what you call it. I just know that I’ve reached a point where I don’t need to sleep with the three dirty T-shirts in the bed next to me every night and that in itself has to be acknowledged in this whole unwanted process of grief.

Looking back over the last eight months since Kenny died, I realized that I had some sort of fog in my brain that I hadn’t realized was there until I started to come out of it a few weeks ago. I had an energy clearing last month by another energy healer and I think that was the catalyst for this fog starting to clear away. I happened across something on the Internet last month called widow brain. As I read about what it was and how it affects you I realized that this is exactly what I had been going through. It was a bright light shone onto something that was making me think I was losing my mind.

As so often happens when you’ve gone through some type of traumatic experience, your brain turns on a switch to help you cope. The switch that comes on after your spouse dies is called widow brain. It comes with a laundry list of “symptoms”, some of which nearly convinced me I was teetering on the edge of madness and that I was completely stupid and worthless.

I could not think straight. I felt like I was walking through a thick haze every minute of every day. I would hear someone say something to me and what I heard either didn’t register with me or only stayed in my head for a very short time. I literally could not process some of the information being told to me or that I was reading. At times, I could not form the simplest of thoughts in my head. This made it hard to learn things and some people thought I was just stupid or inept (or both) for not being able to.

I was very forgetful of a lot of things. I didn’t remember people telling me something, even when they swore they did tell me. It wasn’t that I wasn’t listening to them when they told me-I just did not remember them saying it to me. I often jumbled up in my head some of the things people did say to me. I couldn’t repeat back to them what they just said to me and have it come out of my mouth the same way it came out of theirs.

I forgot how to do some things. I would sit there and look at something I knew how to do before and would think to myself How do I do this? I just could not figure it out. I would be staring at the task at hand with a blank look on my face, silently trying to understand what to do and wondering why I could not remember how to do it. I felt confused a lot of the time. The feelings of frustration made me angry at myself and my feelings of worthlessness were compounded.

I burst out into tears at the most random times. I may have suddenly remembered something about my husband that I had forgotten. I may have come across something of his and started to cry as I held it in my hands. My feelings of extreme sadness and despair were crippling to me and there were some people who were cruel in their inability and refusal to understand this. To those people I will say this-when you lose your loved one I will show you the grace and understanding you did not show to me at a time in my life when I needed it the most.

I was exhausted, both physically and mentally. I could do not much of anything on any given day. I needed to sleep much more than normal. This was my body’s way of healing itself in the ways it needed to be healed. Aches and pains in my body that weren’t there before were there now. This was the extreme feelings of grief manifesting itself as physical pain.

Widow brain affects a good amount of people who’ve lost their spouse. There is no written in stone timeline of how long it will last. It’s different for everyone, just like how long it takes for you to go through your grieving process. I do believe the energy clearing I had facilitated the beginning of the fog and haze lifting from the widow brain. I can’t say I’ll be sorry to see it leave because I will not. This whole process of grieving and dealing with widow brain has been excruciating to go through and I’ll be thankful to be on the other side of it. Since that fog has started to lift, I can finally see a little bit of light at the end of that dark tunnel I’ve been stuck in for the last 249 days.

Before I had kids I had this image in my head of the kind of mother I wanted to be. I’d be patient with them all the time and never lose my cool. I’d never yell at them; I’d always speak in a calm voice. I’d do fun things with them all the time and teach them everything they’d need to know. I’d be the kind of mother that you read about in storybooks and see in movies where the mother is perfect in every way.

All of those idealistic expectations flew out the window when the reality of parenthood set in after the birth of my first child. They fell even further off the edge of the earth after I had my second one. My patience wasn’t always as present as it should have been. My calm voice wasn’t either as my yelling voice showed up too often. Doing the fun things often took a back seat to doing the hard ones and not everything my kids learned was what it should have been.

I learned, after the fact, that parenthood is hard. Like, excruciatingly hard. Bringing these tiny humans into the world and then sustaining them to adulthood was brutal at times. Some days it took every single thing inside me to keep going. I know Kenny felt the same way. Being a parent is literally the hardest job that you will ever do in your entire life. Period.

We both did all we could to make sure our kids always had a roof over their heads, clothes on their backs, and food in their stomachs. There were many times that these very things seemed damned near impossible but somehow we always managed to do them. Throughout all those years that we struggled we both felt like we failed as parents. We felt that they didn’t get the childhood they should have and the versions of us as parents that they deserved. Kenny and I both beat ourselves up so much over the years with these feelings of failure.

It took Kenny dying and the three of us going through the aftermath of it all (which we’re still very much in the midst of) for me to realize that we didn’t fail as parents like we thought we did. It’s quite the opposite, actually. I realized that we really did do a good job of raising them. They both turned out to be really good adults who stand up and do the right thing in situations where many would not. I can say that because I’ve witnessed too many adult children not do the right thing when they should. I’m truly sad for the parents of those adult children who never even take one glance in the rearview mirror at their parents.

Things have been so hard in all ways since Kenny left us and there are some days we just aren’t sure how we’ll make it to the next minute. But, we lean on each other for support and we get through that one minute, one hour, or one day that seems impossible to get through. When one can’t stand, one of the others is there to hold them up. Our kids have been the ones holding me up these last seven months. They’ve been my backbone. I don’t know how I would have survived had it not been for the two of them.

Those two kids grew up seeing their mother and father lean on each other for support. They saw one jump in to do what needed to be done when the other wasn’t able to do it. They saw their parents fight for each other’s preservation in all ways. They learned from their parents that you don’t abandon the ship when it’s sinking, but stay and work together to bail the rising waters out. Our kids learned all these things from us, even though Kenny and I never realized we were teaching it to them. They learned by example.

I could not be more proud of these two adults-these two babies Kenny and I created together and nurtured into adulthood. Kenny is proud of them, too, and I hope they know and feel it deep in their soul, even though he’s not physically here to tell them. I hope they can feel him beaming with pride from the other side of the veil, because he certainly is doing just that.

In the end, neither one of us failed as parents like we thought we did. We actually succeeded. We raised two kids who know the priceless value of family. We raised two amazing humans who stepped in to close the gap in the circle that their father’s death left and did so because it’s what family does. That’s not a failure in any way–it’s a complete success.

There were a handful of days in my head that I knew would be hard for me after Kenny died. I know that every person that’s ever lost someone they love has the same kind of list.

The first Thanksgiving, the first Christmas, our anniversary, the day of our first date, Father’s Day, his birthday, and the day that he died.

Those are all the days that I expected to be especially hard to get through. Days where the grief would wrap itself tightly around me and make me feel like I was suffocating. Days that the depression would be extra hard to deal with.

I expected all of those days to have a deeper sadness hanging over them because those are the days you feel your loved one’s absence so much more than you do on any other given day. It’s on these days that the emptiness left by their death swallows you into a dark vacuum.

One day that I was not anticipating being equally as hard as the ones above was Mother’s Day. I knew Father’s Day was going to be tough because that’s the day our children and I would celebrate his role in our lives. But, I didn’t think that the day we celebrate all the mothers in the world would be so difficult to get through.

But, it was a hard day. My first Mother’s Day without the man who made me a mother was difficult. I went to bed the night before realizing that this day would be just as sad as all the other significant days after a loved one’s death that I had already gone through. I cried when that realization hit and my pillow was damp from my tears as I went to sleep.

This was the first Mother’s Day I spent not hearing the words “Happy Mother’s Day” from Kenny as soon as I woke up. This was the first Mother’s Day that I didn’t hear Kenny say thank you for being the mother to his two beautiful children. This was the first Mother’s Day that there was no card from him that said “Love, Kenny”, written messily in his distinct mixture of upper and lower case letters that became so endearing to me over almost 36 years together.

This was my first Mother’s Day spent as a solo parent, and well, it hurt. It hurt so much more than I was anticipating it would and I wish I could fast forward through all of this hurt. But, I can’t, because it’s all part of the grief process.

I can’t pass go until I’ve moved around the entire board. There’s no shortcut. I have to land on every square and work my way through each and every one before I complete this healing journey. If I do try and get to the ending point without doing all the work on each square, I’ll end up back at the beginning and it’ll be like I never started the process in the first place.

Right after Kenny died, I looked up the stages of grief so I could familiarize myself with what was coming down the pike for me. I wanted to be “prepared”, as if there was really such a thing as that in this situation. I read about the stages, which are usually listed as five, but sometimes more, depending on what website you’re reading.

I thought that the grief process would be linear and I would move through each one of these stages in the order that they are listed on the websites. It made sense to me as I’ve always been someone who needed to do things in order. I soon found out that the grief process is most certainly not linear. It’s anything but that.

I also thought that the grief process would only last for a certain amount of time. It made sense to me, I guess, because doesn’t everything in life have a shelf life? I’ve since found out that grief most certainly does NOT have an expiration date. Don’t you dare let anyone tell you it does, either.

The first stage, denial, came even before Kenny died. The “He is NOT going to die….he IS going to live” was at the forefront of my brain for about two-thirds of the time he was in the hospital. That stage carried over after his death and when I saw him lying next to me in the bed that first night after he died the denial was the strongest it has been through this whole thing. “He’s not dead because he’s laying RIGHT here next to me”. Of course, that was not really him lying in the bed next to me because he was dead, but his soul did make his physical self appear to me to let me know that he was close by.

The anger stage overlapped the denial stage. I had fits of screaming rage at him for dying and leaving us and anger at other people, too. I had anger that he wasn’t here any longer to help me do the things I was having to learn to do myself. I was angry about a lot of things. I felt guilty for these feelings when I experienced them. I still do.

The bargaining stage started even before the ambulance came that morning. It came rushing in as I pleaded and begged him to please wake up and be okay. The bargaining stage rode in the car with me to the ER as I prayed so very hard to God to please save him. That stage was there every single second of the 30+ hours he was in the ICU as we all begged for him to live.

The depression stage moved in immediately after his death. I can remember feeling it padlocking itself over me like an iron suit as we walked through the hospital parking lot that evening after he died. We were leaving there without him….and that just was not fair.

As the days turned into weeks and the weeks turned into months the seldom mentioned stage of jealousy creeped in. Seeing other couples together hit me hard…..and I do mean hard. It was so painful to see other couples together because why couldn’t that still be us? Why did he have to die, and it mean that our happy life together was over? Again, it was just not fair.

The jealousy spurned the anger to rise back up and the anger opened the door for the depression to take center stage again. The depression roped the bargaining in, and the bargaining called all the other stages to come right back in, which they happily did. It’s like an all day and all night screaming rave going on that I want to leave but I can’t find the exit.

I found that the stages of grief were definitely not linear. I wish I understood that in the beginning. I have bounced from one stage to another, back and forth like a yo-yo, and it’s made this unwanted journey all that much harder. I feel like I take one step forward and then I fall backwards a hundred more. It’s hard to see the top of the mountain you’re trying to climb when you keep sliding down to the bottom again.

I recently had someone tell me that it’s been over six months since Kenny died and that I shouldn’t still be depressed. Those words slapped me across the face and stung harder than I think any other words ever have in my whole entire life. Those words also delivered a razor sharp knife right into the center of my heart and left a gaping hole in it that will take a long time to heal, if it even ever does at all.

If there’s ONE thing I have learned during this whole process of grieving it’s that grief does not have an expiration date. I will say it again for those in the back of the room who didn’t hear it the first time–grief does not have an expiration date. Period. It does not.

There is no magical time frame that the grief goes away, never to be seen or heard from again. It doesn’t get placed in a lockbox where it never sees the light of day again. It stays as long as it needs to. It stays as long as it’s necessary for you to work through all the denial, anger, bargaining, depression, jealousy, and whatever other stages you may go through. That might be tomorrow…..or it may be never. But, you are the one who decides how long that grief needs to stay. You, and no other living soul, gets to make that decision. It’s your journey to take, no one else’s. You take all the time you need to work through your grief…..and so will I.