The aftermath of the death of a loved brings something unexpected…..crystal clear vision on some things you couldn’t see before. It’s funny how that happens because so many things during that time are a blur because your grief is blocking a great deal. I think this happens because the things you can now see for what they really are end up being the very things that have no place in your life. Whether it be a person or situation, your new-found clarity guides you to clear them away to protect you.

There have been a handful of people who’ve really shown their true colors to me since Kenny died. Some of them I I already knew deep down how they were, but the empath in me wanted so badly to see the good in them. Some completely blindsided me by what they did. I never saw it coming. Treating a person so awfully who’s in such a vulnerable state like I’ve been in since Kenny’s death is just disgusting. The actions of all of them were quite shocking but I needed to see them. Sometimes people just aren’t who you thought they were all along.

Some of the situations that have presented themselves to me had to happen so I’d learn the very important lesson from experiencing them. I can now say there is a list of things that I will never do again because I did them and they blew up in my face. I’m the one who pulled the pin on the grenade so ultimately I’m responsible. They say insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. If you do what you did, you’ll get what you got. The moral here is do something different so you don’t get the same result as you did all the other times before.

The above things aside, I’ve also been shown the people and things that do belong in my life. They are the ones that I’ll nurture so they continue to grow and evolve into even better versions of what they were before. These are the people and things that I don’t need to wear rose colored glasses to pretend they’re good for me. These are the keepers…..all the rest are the discards. Death doesn’t just take away the living. It also takes away what needs to die in the life of the ones who are left behind.

During the calm, happy periods of our lives we aren’t motivated to change. Why would we be? Things are going great and why would we want to ruin the smooth sailing? The downside to this is that we don’t experience any growth during these calm times. After a while, we stagnate. Nothing good comes from being in that state. It’s only during the storms of our lives that we grow.

Storms are powerful and they very often bring great destruction. A tornado tears across the land, obliterating everything in its path. As it passes over the soil it rips it open and exposes what’s underneath. What may have been soil that was dying off is now regenerated because the healthy soil is brought to the surface.

A hurricane barrels across the vast ocean with such force that it reaches down to the darkest depths and churns up what’s down there, bringing it closer to the surface. What was once dying from no sunlight is now given a second chance to thrive because of the storm.

I’ve used this metaphor many times with people over the years to explain how the storms we encounter in our lives can be beneficial to us. Even in the most horrible and destructive storms comes growth we wouldn’t have experienced had that storm not shown up at our door.

I’m so lost in the storm I’m in now I can’t see through to the others side of it. I’ve been trapped in the middle of it for over five months now, from the moment I woke up to Kenny having a cardiac arrest in the bed beside me. I didn’t know when I went to bed the night before that our lives would never again be the same in just a few short hours. In the blink of an eye, everything changed…..everything.

This storm is like no other I have ever encountered. It rages inside of me all day, every day. I don’t get any reprieve from it while I sleep as it’s taken control of my dreams. I see Kenny’s face behind my closed eyes many nights and the dream is never a happy one. When I wake up in the morning I’m exhausted because I feel like it’s been one long emotional wrestling match in my subconscious mind all night.

At the end of most days I’m left feeling battered like a little wooden boat tethered to the dock that’s been beaten apart by the rough water. I feel like I lose another piece of me every day and I wonder if I can ever reclaim the parts of me that have been lost.

I’ve lost the ability to speak up for myself and have allowed people to walk all over me. This in itself is its own tragedy as I had just finally found my voice the year before after living my entire life prior to that without having ever found it. Things I once cared about it, I don’t anymore. Conversely, things that weren’t so important before are very much important now.

This storm has taken its toll on me in all ways…..emotionally, mentally, and physically. I look in the mirror and the face that I see looking back at me is so different than the one prior to October 8th. Sometimes I wonder if the reflection I’m seeing is really me. I’m wearing my grief and trauma like a mask and I can’t take it off. There are lines in my face that weren’t there before that awful morning. It looks like someone made deep cuts into my face with a knife and the lines are the scars left behind.

My clothes fit more loosely now because grief is the most effective weight loss program you never wanted to be on. Everyone always wants to be thinner but this isn’t the way to attain that.

I don’t want to be in this storm. I want it to go away and never come back again. I want to forget it ever existed. But, it won’t go away, not yet at least, because this storm has its purpose in my life. It has lessons to teach me that I’ve needed to learn for a long time. It has growth to facilitate inside me, whether I like it or not, and truthfully, I don’t like it. I want to skirt the edges of this storm as fast as I can, like a child that runs through a dark hallway as close to the wall as they can to get away from the shadows and the scary, unknown things that hide in them.

But, again, I cannot skirt around this storm. I have no other choice but to go right through it. I have to endure all the pain and suffering and turmoil of it so I can conquer it. The only way is straight through it…..there is no other way.

I often wonder if I get through this storm how things will be on the other side of it. Will my life be so dramatically changed from what it is right now? Will I even be the same person as I was before this storm? Will I ever feel happiness again? What lessons will I have learned and how will I have grown? The answers to these questions don’t lie in the outer limits of the storm, but on the other side of it…..after I’ve gone right through the middle of it.

We often get so lost in our own pain and grief when our loved one dies that we forget that other people are hurting, too. Our pain places us in a vacuum of sorts where all we know is what we are feeling ourselves. It’s like having tunnel vision where we can’t see anything going on in the peripheral. Our own pain is front and center and the only thing we can see. But, we have to step away from that tunnel vision and recognize that others are experiencing their own levels of pain and grief. Sure, it’s not the same kind of pain and grief I’m experiencing from losing my husband, but their pain and grief is still a very real thing and hurts them just as much as mine hurts me.

I do step outside of my own pain to see the pain my adult children are still suffering from losing their dad way before the time they should have. I see the sadness and frustration of my 4 1/2 year old grandson who still doesn’t quite grasp why his Papa who “lives in the clouds up in Heaven” can’t come down here with us. I think that’s the thing that breaks my heart the most. Emory will only remember his Papa through pictures and videos. No child should lose their beloved grandparent that young. It just isn’t fair.

I was able to step completely away from my tunnel vision a few days ago and really see and understand how others outside of myself, my children, and grandson are hurting from Kenny’s unexpected death. My oldest friend in the world, who knew Kenny just as long as I did, broke down and cried over his death. She told me that he was the only male friend she’d had for that long and now he was gone. Kenny didn’t care for a few of the friends I had in the past but he did like this friend a lot. He would have done anything for her because he loved her and really valued her friendship. The three of us had a lot of good times together over the years and I hate like hell that there won’t be anymore memories made from us being together.

Kenny did a lot of carpentry work at her house over the years and she completely trusted him. There’s a stereotype about contractors that you can’t trust any of them and he ran into that with customers many times over the years. He never fought that battle with my friend because she knew Kenny wouldn’t try and take advantage of her. She called him many times to ask how much this or that would be and she always knew he would be truthful with her. She said that her go-to person was gone and what was she going to do now? I told her I completely understand that. There were several “Damn it Kenny! Why did you have to go and die and leave us?!” spoken between the two of us on the phone that night. I’ve said that very same thing myself so many times since he died that I’ve lost count.

My friend was at the hospital with us and saw everything that happened to Kenny with her own eyes. She stood next to his bedside and saw him lying unconscious there in the ICU, hooked up to a mass of beeping machines. She saw him slipping away from us and she pleaded with him not to, just like the rest of us all did. I do remember seeing her cry when she saw him but in the moment it didn’t all register with me. I thought at the time she was crying for him, for me, our children and grandson. I didn’t realize until we had our long phone conversation a few days ago that the tears she cried then and now were also for her losing her longtime friend who she loved like a brother. She lost someone she loved…..just like we did.

I cried on the phone with my friend because she was hurting and I didn’t want her to hurt. We cried together because there will never be another Kenny in our lives like the one we had in him. I cried because I felt her pain instead of mine and it was so terribly awful. I didn’t think it was possible for my heart to break any more than it already had, but it did that night on the phone with her.

That phone conversation was very important. It allowed me to separate myself completely from the ever present pain and grief that has lived inside me for five months, if only for a few hours. The tunnel vision faded away briefly and I was able to see all that was happening outside of it, which was other people besides myself trying to crawl through their own pain and grief of losing their loved one.

My dad told me this one thing about a year before he died and it is so very true……just because what that person over there is going through isn’t as bad as what you’re going through, it doesn’t mean that their thing doesn’t bother them just as much as yours bothers you. It means that the mountains in front of us we’re trying to climb are all the same size to each of us. The other people who lost Kenny are hurting just as much as I am and I need to remember that. Their mountains are just as hard for them to climb as the one I’m trying to conquer myself.

So, on the last day of last year I had something come to the my doorstep that I wasn’t expecting, especially after the events of the prior three months in the aftershock of Kenny’s sudden and unexpected death. A friend of mine who’s an author of several books sent me a message and asked if I would like to be one of the contributing authors in her upcoming collaborative book. She had written and published two collaborative books already and two more in the series were on the table. I told her I would love to be a part of her book but I didn’t know how or what that would entail on my end.

She gave me the info on the book and told me there was a financial investment in getting it published. I knew I could write the chapter as writing has always come so easily to me since I was a young girl. The financial investment part was a block for me as I did not have that money to spare. Since Kenny died things have been very hard financially, and I did not know where my portion of that financial investment could be pulled from.

My friend said one thing to me—“Write the chapter. The money will come if it’s meant to be”.

So, I did. The words came so easily it surprised me. I sent the chapter to my friend and she liked it. I told her I still didn’t know where the money was going to come from for my investment in the publishing process. She told me a story of how years ago when she was really struggling financially someone left $1000 in her mailbox. She said she never found out who it was but it really made a difference in her life at the time. She repeated to me again that if this was meant to be the money would come.

I ruminated over this for weeks. I had absolutely no idea how I was going to be able to afford this. I had a little bit of money put back from after Kenny died but it wasn’t much more than I needed for this. If I took the leap and made the investment I literally would have just a few hundred dollars left.

As the weeks went by I kept getting nudges from above to do this. I pushed them back at first but they kept coming. They got harder and harder to ignore. I talked everything over with both of my children and they were in support of whatever I chose to do. I finally made the decision to go ahead and make the investment to have my chapter included in the upcoming book as this would open a lot more doors for me as a writer.

I let my friend know that I made the decision to go ahead and do this. A few days later she sent me a message and told me that a benefactor had come forward to scholarship most of what my financial investment would be. She did not tell me who it was and I did not ask. I feel like I had to make the decision myself to go ahead and do it for whoever this person(s) was to come forward and offer that scholarship. The decisions that we make in life change the trajectory of how things play out for us and I believe that’s what happened here.

I covered the rest of the financial investment myself, which was a fraction of what it would have been had no one sponsored me. This secured my chapter being included in the book. It’s going to be published in June. The first two books in the series went to the best sellers list in their genre within hours. This book will follow the same path.

This happening has been the ONLY thing that has made me feel hopeful about anything since Kenny died. None of this would have come about if he was still here because all of the writing that I have been doing since he died brought me to this point. From the greatest pain I have ever experienced in my whole entire life came writing so powerful that grief was the only thing that could facilitate it.

I’ve had many people come and tell me that what I’ve been writing has helped them so much. I’m truly thankful that my words are having a positive effect on others. There’s a saying that goes “Stay in your lane”. What that means is to be and do what you’re familiar with. THIS is my lane. This is what I was sent here to do and this is my life’s purpose…..to write and to help others heal.

Kenny’s hands are all over this whole thing. I truly believe with every fiber of my being that he is the one (along with the Creator) that is orchestrating all of it from the other side. He knew for years how much I loved to write, and how it’s been a lifelong dream of mine to be a published author. He’s still looking after me and taking care of me from the other side of the veil, just like he always did in our 35 1/2 years together.

Thank you, Kenny, for bringing this opportunity to my doorstep. You were (and always will be) such a blessing in my life and I am eternally grateful that our paths crossed so many years ago. My love for you will never die and even though we are separated in the physical form I know that you are still right there beside me like you always were. Thank you for making my lifelong dream come true and for guiding me to what is in my highest good. I love you to the moon and back, forever and ever, and I’ll see you when it’s my time to join you over there.

Love,

Lisa

Remember in the movie Groundhog Day how Bill Murray’s character was stuck repeating the same day over and over and over again? Every morning when he woke up the same song was playing on the radio, he met the same people on the street, ate at the same cafe, and just repeated everything again and again and again. No matter what he did, he couldn’t escape that day. He was literally stuck there.

This is what happens to me every day. There’s a loop that plays over and over again in my head of the events from 3 a.m. on Friday, October 8th to 2:37 p.m. on Saturday, October 9th. The scene plays repeatedly in my mind like an endless loop, and no matter how hard I try I cannot stop it from playing. It’s like one long, continual horror movie that I never wanted to see and I can’t get up and leave the theater because I’m chained to the seat.

I try to think of other things but it’s always there. It’s like a steel plate in the front of mind that I can’t move. I’ve used that description of it before and it’s still very much true. That steel plate is comprised of all the painful memories of that day and a half when our lives were ripped apart by an event we never saw coming and still to this day can’t believe happened.

I try to think of happy things but the loop comes right back. I try to push it out of my mind with more happy thoughts but it’s no use. It’s relentless and shoves everything else out of the way so it can be front and center. It haunts me all day, every day. It haunts me in my sleep. There is no reprieve, ever.

I want this loop to stop playing. I don’t want to see it playing over and over again anymore but I don’t know how to make it stop. Some days I’m afraid this loop will continue to play repeatedly till the day I die.

People tell me I need to smile more. To be happier. It’s hard to be those things when all you can see inside your head is this traumatic loop playing over and over and over again. If they could be inside my head they’d understand why it’s so excruciatingly hard to smile or to be happy, when all I can see and hear is the repeating images and sounds from that horrific day and a half.

I know others see the heaviness in my face and body language. It’s hard to hide. I know they see the pain and sadness in my eyes. If they were viewing what I am every day in my head they’d understand.

I imagine this kind of loop plays in the head of all people who’ve experienced extreme trauma. My heart bleeds for every single person who’s ever endured this because I definitely know their pain. It’s unbearable and at times seems unsurvivable.

This trauma is real. I feel it. My children feel it. My grandson feels it. I wonder how long this will last, or if it even ever goes away? Only God knows that answer and He hasn’t told us when this ends. All I do know is that the events of those 35 hours are seared into my memory and I can’t make the repeating loop of it stop.

Every day seems like Groundhog Day to me.

This is going to be an ugly and very blunt post. It won’t be pretty and it will have bad language. It’s an outpouring of raw grief and despair that I just can’t hold in anymore.

Dying is the easy part of this whole thing we call life. Some people think it’s the hard part, but that’s total bullshit. It’s the living that those left behind have to do that will kill you. It’s the picking up of all the shattered pieces and trying to put them back together again the best you can that will bring you right down to your knees.

It’s trying to get through every second of each day without having a nervous breakdown because you just don’t know how you’ll survive. Some days are manageable while some are downright fucking brutal. It’s those days where you cry most of the day and then more at night. It’s lying awake in bed not being able to sleep even though you’re exhausted.

It’s being angry a lot of mornings because you woke up when you didn’t want to because you just want to go and be with the one that left you behind. Being left here feels like you’re the loser in an ugly, bloody battle.

It’s trying to maneuver through the unfamiliar territory of doing all the things your significant other did for you that you don’t know how to do yourself and hope you don’t fuck it all up like you’ve already fucked up all the other things in your life.

It’s feeling like you’re wearing out the ears of your friends who you spend way too much time crying into about how everything in your life is in a state of ruins and you don’t know how to fix it. It’s also trying to hold back as much as you can with them because you don’t want them to run away in the other direction when they see you coming or hear you calling.

It’s trying to figure out how you’re going to pull together what’s needed to pay your debts before the final deadline and then it’s too late. It’s hoping and praying for the best in this situation.

It’s doing the best you can trying to learn a new job that you’ve never done before and feeling like a complete failure at because it’s all so foreign to you.

It’s trying to smile to the world when you feel dead inside and nothing even remotely close to happy. Smiling and happiness are excruciatingly difficult to fake. A blank face and misery are not.

It’s feeling like you’re a burden on everyone, including yourself. It’s hating yourself for this because you shouldn’t have to be a burden on anyone, but yet you are. It’s this feeling that makes you withdraw and not want to tell anyone how hopeless you feel most of the time.

It’s being angry at yourself for the state your life is in. It’s being painfully aware that you are solely responsible for it and no one else is to blame for it except for yourself. It’s being disgusted with the person you see in the mirror everyday because you had your whole life to get your shit together to prepare for the future and you didn’t. It’s feeling the internal head shaking from others who want to say this very thing to you but don’t because they don’t want to hurt your feelings. It’s okay, they don’t have to say it. I already know they’re thinking it because I can feel their disappointment in me. Their disappointment in me doesn’t even come close to the disappointment I have in myself.

It’s the stress of all of the things above piling up on top of all the other stress that’s crushing the stress you’re already under because your loved one died so suddenly, unexpectedly and tragically and left you alone.

Hell exists here on earth, among the living, in those who are left behind. The nightmare of trying to survive the aftermath of your loved one’s death is all the hell your soul can take. I’ll take the reprieve of dying over this living shit any day.

From the very first second that I woke up the morning Kenny had his cardiac arrest in the bed next to me “Why?” ran through my head constantly. Why did this happen to him? Why did this happen to us? Why can’t he just be okay? A hundred different questions of why. I got no answer to any of those why’s that morning.

Those why’s continued all that day and into the next when he died in the ICU with all of us standing around him, holding his hands as he drew his last breath. The why’s continued to haunt me and our children every day.

It’s hard to find any type of gratitude when a tragedy occurs. But, as I tell all the people who come to me for healing sessions, there is always something good to be found in the worst of all situations. Sometimes, you just have to dig very deep to extract it.

As the months have rolled by like a blur, those little bits of gratitude have made themselves known to me. It was hard to see that gratitude in the middle of the storm surrounding Kenny’s death but it is there.

I told our daughter Kaitlin one day when the temperature outside was especially cold, “I bet you never thought you’d hear me say this but I’m glad Dad doesn’t have to work in this cold weather.” She was surprised to hear me say it, but she agreed that it was true. As Kenny got older the harsh cold of winter and searing heat of summer was so hard on him. He said many times “I’m the one that chose this life.” And he was right, he had chosen the life of a carpenter. Working a job indoors would have never made him happy.

I also said that I was thankful Kenny didn’t have his cardiac arrest while he as driving, especially while pulling his work trailer. That would have been a whole other set of problems that would have made things exponentially worse for me. We could have been sued by anyone else involved in the accident. I wouldn’t be able to blame the other people involved, but it would have made things so much worse. He also would have very likely died right then and there.

I’m also grateful that Kenny didn’t have his cardiac arrest while he was on a job. If the homeowner wasn’t home they would have come home to find him unconscious, but more likely, already dead. Had Kenny had the cardiac arrest on a job, he would have been dead before our children and I could have gotten there, especially our son Gage, who lives in Colorado. Gage would not have been able to see his father while he was still alive and he would have lived with that regret the rest of his life. Thankfully, Gage was able to fly in the same day Kenny went to the hospital and got to spend almost a whole day with his dad, even if he was unconscious.

I also think of how Kenny’s body would have been in even worse condition as he got older than 58 years old. The job he did was a hard one and it took a real toll on him physically. I honestly don’t know how he did it all those years. He knew plenty of older carpenters whose bodies were completely wrecked from long years of this type of work and he wasn’t looking forward to that happening as he got older. He doesn’t have to worry about that now. And neither do I. His body was restored to a state of perfection the instant he died. He actually told me that while I was channeling his soul right before he died. He told me “I am restored”. That brought me a small sense of comfort in the horror that we were living through at the time.

It snowed here here the last two weekends. As a construction family, Kenny and I didn’t like snow. Construction is a weather driven business and if the weather’s bad you can’t work. If you can’t work, you don’t make any money. I’m glad Kenny wasn’t here to have to stress about the snow. I cleared all the snow from the sidewalk and the car myself yesterday and it really took its toll on me physically. I spent all day today resting from a sore body. It gave me a whole new appreciation of how hard Kenny worked every day and I felt a little of how his body felt all the time after working so hard, which he did without complaint to take care of his family.

As time continues to go by there will be more things to be grateful for in the tragedy of Kenny’s death. I guess this is part of the grieving process, that as the days, weeks, months, and eventually years roll by, you start to see things in a different light. I believe the pain will always be there, but it will be lessened over time. And, I believe that more things to be grateful for will be shown to us. As the old saying goes, “Things could have been much worse”…..and they certainly could have been. And because they weren’t, I am eternally grateful.

After my husband died, the lost and lonely feelings were unbearable. I didn’t know what to do with myself. During the week I kept my grandson while my daughter and her husband worked. But, on the weekends, I had to leave the house before madness set in.

Kenny had his cardiac arrest in this house, in his sleep, lying next to me in our bed. Even though I was able to bring him back with the CPR I frantically performed on him, he died a day and a half later. As far as I’m concerned, he died in this house.

This house holds such a heavy, sad energy for me that I can’t shake off. It depresses me to be here. Kenny is everywhere in this house. I see him in every piece of furniture, every piece of art hanging on the wall, every dish in the cabinet. There’s nothing he hasn’t touched or used here.

I can’t sit in this house on the weekends and stare at these walls that have his name written all over them. I have to step away from here for my own mental health. I adopted a habit of walking around stores most Saturday’s and Sunday’s. I’m not really shopping, I’m just wasting time because I don’t want to go home. I walk slowly up and down the aisles, looking at everything and nothing all at the same time.

I run my hand over the material of the blankets and pillows as I pass by them. I like the soft minky blankets and velvet pillows the best. I don’t touch the rough ones. I wonder why I can never find turquoise velvet throw pillows anywhere. That was something I complained to Kenny about a lot over the last few years.

I look at all the different coffee mugs and wonder if Kenny would like using one of them instead of the Year of the Rabbit one I bought him years ago. He needed a coffee mug with a large handle so he could fit his overly large fingers through it.

I pick up different pieces of cookware and laugh to myself because Kenny would ask me why I was looking at them since I don’t really like to cook. He’d probably roll his eyes as he said it. He was right though. I don’t really like to cook that much.

I look at the men’s T-shirts to see if they carry his size. He had broad shoulders, a big chest and big arms, and most stores didn’t have any that would fit him. If I do find a shirt in his size I look to see if it has printing on the front or the back. He never liked T-shirts with printed fronts.

I walk by the men’s shoes to see if they have any size 12 extra wide’s like he wore. Usually they don’t. If they do, they’re usually neon colored ones for the basketball court and that’s not shoes he would have ever worn.

I know that a lot of people who’ve lost their spouse do this very same thing. They walk aimlessly around stores because they don’t know what else to do. A good friend of mine told me he used to go walk around the mall a lot after his marriage ended. Like me, he did this as a distraction. Even though he lost his spouse through divorce, and not through death like I did, his loneliness was still very palpable and I felt his pain so much when he was telling me this.

In talking to another friend of mine I told her of my habit of walking around stores on the weekends. She told me a story of someone she knew who had lost their partner and how they did the same thing. A woman walked up to her in a store and said “You’ve lost your partner, haven’t you”. The other woman was shocked and replied that yes she had, and asked her how she knew. The woman said “I could tell. You’re doing the wandering”.

The Wandering.

Yes, that’s exactly what it is. The Wandering.

When my friend told me this story it gave a name and a face to this unwelcome routine. The name sounds like some sad novel about a lonely, homeless soul. And really, that’s what I feel like myself most days.

I wonder how long it will feel this way. I wonder if it will ever get less lonely. I wonder if I’ll stop feeling lost and feel found instead. How long does it take for all this to subside? How long before The Wandering goes away and never returns? I don’t know the answers to these questions and I’m not sure anyone else does either. All I do know is that I wish I never met The Wandering. I wouldn’t wish for anyone else to meet it either.

For now though, The Wandering is my weekend companion. There will come a day that I won’t need it anymore. When that finally happens, I hope I’ll recognize the ones who are doing it themselves so I can send them prayers for healing of their grief. My eyes will meet theirs and I’ll silently tell them “I know exactly what you’re feeling. Just know that The Wandering won’t be with you forever.”

I watched the cartoon movie “Up” with my grandson recently. It’s an endearing story about Carl and Ellie, who met each other in childhood. Carl was a shy boy who was mesmerized by the much more outgoing Ellie. In a blanket fort in Carls room, Ellie shared with him her My Adventure Book scrapbook. Inside the book were pictures of a famous explorer and the far away lands he had been to. On one of the pages Ellie wrote “Stuff I’m Going To Do”. She explained to Carl that the blank pages of her scrapbook were waiting to be filled with all the exciting adventures she was going to go on one day.

The next scene shows Carl and Ellie getting married. They were blissfully happy together and as the images in the movie roll by it’s obvious how much they loved one another. They planned to do many grand things together in the life ahead of them and saved money in a big glass jar in anticipation of the day that would come to fruition. As so often happens, things come up, plans get derailed and money put away for future dreams has to be spent on other things. Eventually, Carl and Ellie’s plans get pushed to a dark corner and forgotten.

As they grew older, Carl and Ellie slowed down but they were still very much in love, just as much as they were on their wedding day. Carl decided to finally buy the tickets for him and Ellie to visit that far-away land they had both dreamed of visiting since their childhood. Before he could surprise her with the tickets though, Ellie fell ill. She never made it on their adventure. Carl was broken-hearted because the great love of his life was now gone and they would never get to make that trip together. He decided to make the trip himself in Ellie’s honor.

After his own adventure he sat down to look through Ellie’s scrapbook. He was filled with sadness that Ellie never got to go on that adventure she had been dreaming of for so long. When he got to the page that said “Stuff I’m Going To Do”, he touched the page with deep regret as tears welled up in his eyes. You can feel the pain that’s shown on Carl’s face. I can imagine that Carl felt like he had failed Ellie in never going on that adventure that they’d planned on so many years ago.

As Carl is about to close the book, he’s surprised to see that the pages are filled with pictures of him and Ellie beyond that page she had written on. There’s a picture of them at their wedding, both of them with big smiles on the faces. There’s one of them dancing, celebrating a birthday, riding in a car together, sitting under their favorite tree together, and many others. On the last page Ellie wrote a little note to Carl that said “Thanks for the adventure-now go have a new one!” It’s in this moment that Carl realizes that his and Ellie’s life together was the adventure. They didn’t need a trip to a far-away land to make their life complete.

I cried when I watched this scene in the movie because it’s the story of Kenny’s and my life together. We had big plans when we were just starting out. There were so many things we wanted to do that never happened. Something always got in the way and prevented those things from being realized. The house we wanted to build together never happened and that bothered Kenny a lot. He could have built the whole thing himself with the skills he perfected over a 40 year career as a master carpenter.

The only vacation we ever took as a family was to Disney World in 2004. We wanted to take our children so many other places over the years but the money was never there to do so. There were also places that Kenny and I wanted to go in the last few years since becoming empty nester’s. That didn’t happen either.

We wanted to find some kind of business we could do together that would be more financially lucrative for us and easier on Kenny than carpentry had been. We never figured out what that business was and so it never happened, just like the other things we had wanted to do.

We both beat ourselves up over the years for the things that didn’t materialize for us. Many times, we felt like failures. It’s hard to see other people have the things you so desperately want but not be able to have them yourself. It was hard for me to watch Kenny carry those feelings of his perceived unworthiness because he didn’t have the things he wanted for us that others did have.

In watching the movie about Carl and Ellie with my grandson, I realized that mine and Kenny’s life together WAS our adventure. We didn’t have the custom built home like we wanted but we did always have a roof over all four of our heads. We didn’t have all the extravagant vacations like we wanted but we made our own fun with our children. We never found that perfect lucrative business to do together but we still managed to get by on what we did make at our jobs. Life didn’t go as we had planned it to all those years ago, but the life that we did have together was a happy one.

Kenny gave me his own “Thanks for the adventure-now go have a new one!” after his death. The outpouring of raw and extreme grief brought about the best writing I’ve done in my entire life. That in turn brought new opportunities to my door that will fulfill one of my lifelong dreams, and for that, I am eternally grateful to him. In death, Kenny is still looking out for me, just as he had done every day of our life together.

What I want Kenny to know is that even though we didn’t have the life we planned, ours was a life well lived. It was a life filled with love, happiness, laughter and joy. It’s a life I wouldn’t trade for all the riches, custom built houses or fancy vacations in all the world for. It only took me watching a cartoon movie with a 4 year old to realize that the adventures Kenny and I had planned on so long ago did in fact come true but in another, much better form. Thank you for the beautiful memories, Kenny. I’ll see you on the other side…….after I’ve lived the new adventures that lie in front of me, gifted by the great love of my life who’s gone on ahead.

After my husband died, I searched the internet for information on the stages of grief. There are about five to seven different stages, depending on which which website you’re reading. Shock, denial, guilt, bargaining, anger, depression, and acceptance are the ones most people are familiar with. I wanted to read about these steps so I’d know what I’d be facing in the aftermath of my husband’s death. I wanted to be prepared in the best way that I could for the roller coaster of emotions that was coming for me.

In reading about them, I thought that you go through the stages in order. That was logical to me and I assumed that this was the “rule” of going through the stages of grief. That didn’t happen, at least not to me. I have jumped all over these stages, so much so that I feel like the steel ball inside a pinball machine. I’m being slammed up against all the different bumpers, back and forth, and there’s no controlling it. Some days I’m still in shock; some days it still doesn’t seem real. Some days I’m mad as hell that he died and some days I feel terrible guilt for not being able to ultimately save him. Every day I feel some level of depression. The stage of acceptance seems so far off in the distance that it leaves me wondering if it will ever show up. For now, that stage seems unattainable.

There’s one aspect of grief that people don’t really talk about. It’s jealousy, that horrible little green-eyed monster that people who are grieving either don’t want anyone to know they’re experiencing, or they completely deny it exists for them because they’re embarrassed that they feel it. You can also call it resentment or envy. It doesn’t really matter which one because they’re all pretty much the same thing.

Well, let me tell you this……it DOES exist when you’re going through the grief process. It took me a while to admit to anyone else that I was having feelings of jealousy towards other people whose spouses were still alive. I was (still am) ashamed of having those feelings and I feel guilty as hell for feeling them. Maybe writing about it and putting it out there for everyone to read will help alleviate some of that guilt. Maybe it won’t. I don’t really know.

I took me a long while to be able to hit the like button on social media posts of people celebrating an anniversary or pictures of them and their spouses. Any kind of picture or post that showed them in any state of happiness, I just could not like. It was just too painful for me. Why did they get to have their spouse still when mine had died? It just was not fair.

When I would see couples out in public together, I could not be happy for them. Again, I felt the same jealousy mentioned above. Sometimes I wanted to run up to these people and scream at them “Don’t take anything for granted! Cherish every single second with the one you love because it could all be gone tomorrow!” Of course, I didn’t do that but the look on my face probably gave my feelings away.

I also felt some pretty strong resentment towards people who are horrible human beings but yet THEY get to keep on living while my husband, who was a really good man, did not. It’s like the old saying “Only the good die young” is true. Months back someone told me that they thought the reason God took the good ones early but allowed those people who weren’t so good to keep on living was to give them extra time to become a good person and get things right. I guess it’s a plausible explanation, but it sure doesn’t make me feel any better.

I just said above what a lot of people going through the grieving process won’t say. I would bet the farm that nearly every person who has lost their spouse feels the very same feelings, even if they won’t say it. That’s okay, I said it for you. They really should acknowledge them though because in doing so it will help them heal.

I’ve sat with these feelings of jealousy, resentment and envy for three months now. I’ve mostly kept them to myself as I don’t want (or need) any judgement from others for having such shameful feelings rolling around inside me. I’ve written about them in the journal I take with me on Sundays when I sit in the back pew of a church. That journal is for my eyes only for now as it’s an outpouring of all the emotions I feel from losing my husband. The anger, guilt, and depression is all in there in the pages of that journal, scribbled down in my handwriting that isn’t always so legible. Writing about all of this is what is keeping me sane and is helping me to process these stages of grief……and tame the green-eyed monster known as jealousy.

When I was a little girl I thought, like most children do, that a mountain of presents under the tree was what was most important at Christmas. When the big Sears Wish Book catalog came in the mail we would excitedly circle all the things we wanted and hope that we’d find them under the tree on Christmas morning. I remember being more conservative in what I circled in the catalog, unlike my younger sibling who circled nearly every thing on every page.

As I reflect back, I can barely remember what presents were under the tree on most of those Christmas mornings. I remember a few things here and there but most of them aren’t really an actual memory but what I see in the pictures that were taken on those mornings. There just weren’t many presents over the years that left such a lasting impression upon me that I’ve remembered them.

What I do remember most about Christmas mornings though was who was there. In my earliest years it was my mom and dad and my siblings. Our tree was set up in our living room where there was plenty of room for four kids to spread out and tear through the presents. Some years my grandparents were there, either at our house or us at their house. What I remember about the Christmas mornings spent at my grandparents house was the color wheel spinning around and casting different colors upon the glistening silver branches of the tinsel tree they had. I think the Christmases spent with my grandmother there are my favorite from when I was younger. Her presence made everything right in the world, at least for me.

As you get older you realize that what was wrapped up under the tree wasn’t what was most important on Christmas. It was who was there that had the most meaning. Presence……not presents. This year will be the first Christmas since 1986 that I won’t be spending with Kenny. To say it’s sad is a gross understatement. Nothing can fill the empty spot in mine and my family’s heart that his absence has left. I am grateful for all the Christmases we did have together, first as a young couple, and then as parents. We were lucky enough to have spent the last four Christmases as grandparents and I hope our grandson will remember his Papa being there on Christmas mornings, even if it is remembering them through pictures and videos.

As my children and my grandson grow older I hope they’ll remember all the Christmases that Kenny was there. I hope they’ll hold those memories inside their hearts and look back on them with happiness and joy, not sadness because he’s no longer here. I hope they’ll always know that the best present ever was Kenny’s presence here, with them, because really, his presence was the very best present of all.

One of the definitions of the word sanctuary is a place of refuge or safety. Most people think of a sanctuary as a physical place. For some, it is exactly that. For others, that sanctuary can be found in the form of another person. They can provide you a different kind of refuge and safety than a geographical location can.

Since my husband died I feel like I’ve lost my sanctuary. He was my refuge from everything in life that I couldn’t handle on my own, which in hindsight, was quite a lot. He was my safe place where I knew I could always find shelter. Many storms were weathered in the safe harbor he provided so unselfishly to me for more than half my life.

Having your sanctuary ripped away from you leaves you feeling lost. You retreat and withdraw because you don’t know what else to do. But hiding your face in a dark corner can only continue for so long. You have to eventually step out into the light a little bit because you can’t survive in the dark forever. The dark is unhealthy and we weren’t meant to live there.

You’re forced to try and find your sanctuary in other ways.

You might find it by filling the blank pages of a notebook with all the words that describe the unbearable grief and loneliness you’re feeling. It might be on the other end of a phone line with a trusted friend as they listen to you cry, again. You may find it in the back pew of a church listening to that one sentence the pastor speaks that you were supposed to hear. It might be found in creating a new habit with your grandchild so they never forget the loved one who left much sooner than they should have. It can also be found sitting alone in your car in a parking lot on a rainy day if need be.

While the above things won’t be the same as the sanctuary that other person gave you, they might bring you some much needed peace, if only for a bit. In time, they may be able to start to fill the void left inside you when your sanctuary was taken away.

It’s human nature to look forward to the big things in life. Those big things are what we think we’ll always remember when we come to the end of our run here on earth. We tend to overlook the little things because they are seemingly so insignificant. They’re such small details that we think they don’t amount to much. But, the reality is that those little things are what end up being what mattered the most.

We get so lost in expectation of the big things that all the little things that happen along the way go unnoticed. What happens though is that all those little things get filed away in our subconscious. They leave an imprint on our soul that we don’t even realize is happening. When those things are suddenly gone is when we realize just how much they meant to us. They were what mattered the most of all. That’s exactly what has happened to me since Kenny died. All the little things he did for me, things I took for granted, are now gone. They’re nothing but bittersweet memories for me now.

Kenny was almost a foot taller than me. He had to lean down to kiss me. Most of the time he wore a baseball hat and the bill of the hat would bump me on the forehead. Years ago he started to lift his hat up by the bill a little when he leaned down to kiss me so it didn’t hit me on my forehead. Other times, he would kiss me on the top of my head or my forehead. There’s a tenderness in a forehead kiss that most people don’t realize. I think forehead kisses are probably the sweetest kisses of all.

We got married on February 14th. I always teased Kenny that he got off easy since he could combine Valentine’s Day and our anniversary. We didn’t always buy gifts for each other over the years but we still acknowledged what that day meant. There are plenty of men out there who have forgotten their anniversary but Kenny never did, not once in the 29 1/2 years we were married. He even remembered the date we had our first date, March 22nd. Without him, those two dates will never again be the same for me.

When we would come home Kenny always unlocked the door, pushed it open and then stepped back to let me go in the house first. Even if he had an armful of grocery bags, he always let me go in first. If you didn’t already know, that’s what chivalry is. He always opened the door of a store or restaurant for me, too. I see too many men not do this for the woman they’re with and I’m sad for both of them. They don’t make men like Kenny anymore.

Sometimes when we were riding in the car we would hold each others hand. We would also pat each others thigh or just leave our hand there. We did the same thing while sitting next to each other in a restaurant. We would also rest our hands on the other’s arm while sitting in bed. Human touch is such an important thing in life and when it’s suddenly gone you feel like an empty shell of a person.

Kenny would often start my car for me so the engine wasn’t cold when I got in it to drive. He would also turn on my heated seat if it was really cold. He knew how much I disliked the cold weather and he wanted to make sure I was as warm as possible getting into the car. He also used to put his big hands over my little hands and rub them together when it was cold. My hands are always cold in the winter and he could warm them up immediately that way.

I’ve always had a hard time accepting compliments and Kenny knew it. He would make it a point to compliment me on many things and when I rebuffed them he would tell me to stop it and just accept the compliment. He helped to build up my self-esteem over the years as it was pretty non-existent when I met him. You don’t know how much a little compliment really means until you don’t hear it anymore.

Kenny was self-employed so his schedule was of his own making. Most days, he would call me to talk when he was sitting in his truck eating the lunch that I made for him. Our conversations usually weren’t anything important but rather small talk. Sometimes it was just so we could hear each other’s voice. He would tell me about the job he was doing, things the customers said, or how his Home Depot or Lowe’s trip for supplies had went that morning. He would also take short breaks to get a drink from his truck and take a minute to send me a text telling me he loved me. We said “I love you” to each other many times a day over the 35 1/2 years we spent together. The last time I heard Kenny tell me he loved me was when we went to bed the night before he had his heart attack.

From the first time I met Kenny he protected me, always. He put up a protective shield around me and wouldn’t let other people hurt me. He was like a knight in shining armor to me. That’s a quality a lot of men seem to lack these days. He wasn’t the kind of man who was loud and boisterous in his protection. It was exhibited in quiet strength instead. This has been one of the hardest things for me to deal with since he died as I’ve already been the receiver of hurtful actions by people who should have never done what they did. If Kenny was here those things would have never happened. Not having him here to protect me has left me feeling vulnerable, exposed and alone. It’s a pretty scary feeling not having someone to protect you.

Every year around the holidays Kenny would always let me know when “It’s A Wonderful Life” was on television. He knew it was my favorite movie and even though I’ve seen it probably three dozen times over the years he still would call me in the other room to see it. He was always amazed that I could speak the lines in the movie from memory right along with the actors. I think Kenny secretly liked that movie too even though he said it was sappy. Maybe that’s because he was the same kind of humble man who everyone loved just like George Bailey was.

There are so many other little things Kenny did that I miss. My heart longs for every single one of them. He isn’t here to do any of them any longer but they’ll remain in my memories till I leave here myself. I wish I’d realized all those years ago that it would never be the big things in our life that held the most importance but the little things instead. In the minutia of our lives is where those most important things will be found.

We all have different relationship roles that make up our identity. We are mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, sons and daughters, and sisters and brothers. We are also grandmothers and grandfathers, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, and cousins.

My identity started out almost 55 years ago as daughter to Richard and Shirley. I was also a sister to Vicki, Gigi, Tamra and later to my younger brother. I was a granddaughter to Curtis and Velma and Thomas Reid and Juanita. I was a niece to Pinkey and Ronnie and Gary and later to Jack and Bessie. I was a cousin to many. As I grew older my identity included friend to an array of people and then later, girlfriend to Kenny.

My identity of Kenny’s girlfriend eventually became that of Kenny’s wife. That was a very large part of my identity for almost 30 years and I really loved it, even during times of the marital strife that we all experience at some point. This identity was comfortable and made me feel whole and complete. It was warm and secure. This identity was full of light and happiness and love.

When he died I was no longer Kenny’s wife. I became Kenny’s widow instead. I don’t like being Kenny’s widow and I don’t want to be known as that. I detest the word widow. It’s an ugly word and I wish it never existed. This is an identity I never wanted. I know hate is a very strong word with awful connotations but that’s the emotion I’m feeling with this new and very much unwanted identity. I want to go back to my formerly known as identity but that isn’t possible.

This new identity is like an ill fitting iron suit that I can’t take off. It’s bone chilling cold. It weighs a million pounds and it has sharp edges. It’s so tight and it makes it hard to breathe. This identity is dark and lonely and full of sadness. It’s also angry and at times, full of rage.

When Kenny died I felt like a huge part of my identity had been ripped away from me that I’ll never be able to get back. It feels like someone has taken the sharpest knife and sliced off a giant part of me that I can’t ever retrieve. I feel fractured and broken. I feel like I can’t ever be put back together again. What my former identity has been replaced with feels repugnant. I honestly do not know how other people who’ve lost their spouse handle all this. I wish there was a handbook to help you navigate these very dark waters.

I know getting used to this new identity will take time. How long that process will be, God only knows. I can only hope that grace and understanding will lay the foundation of this unfamiliar road ahead of me. But please, don’t call me Kenny’s widow. Those words cut me like a razor blade. I am Kenny’s wife.

The old saying that you never truly understand something until you experience it is so very true. I’ve had so many realizations that would have never occurred to me had my husband not died. I see things from a different perspective now. You see a situation from a whole different point of view when you’re standing on the other side of it.

It’s like I’m now standing outside and looking in the window of a room I had been in for over 35 years. The things I see now are much different than they appeared to be when I was inside that room. I’m no longer the participant; I’m the observer. That change in perspective affords one crystal clear vision. These are some of the observations I’ve made since becoming recently widowed~

I liked taking care of my husband

For years I complained that there were things my husband didn’t do for himself but depended on me to do for him. For a long time I thought that this was societal conditioning from the generation we grew up in and from him seeing how the generation before was. I still do believe that’s true but I see it differently now.

Even before we started living together I did a lot of things for him. I would wash his clothes and straighten his room up when I went to see him. He was perfectly able to do those things for himself (and he did before I met him) but it made me feel good to do them for him. I came into this world a nurturer and I need someone to take care of. Since my husband died I’ve felt lost not having a partner to attend to their needs.

I have my adult children and my grandson to nurture but that’s nurturing in a different manner. I’m in the mother and grandmother role in those relationships and the care I give them isn’t the same that I gave to my husband. He’s not here anymore for me to make his lunch and pack it in his Stanley lunchbox. He’s not here anymore for me to write little notes to and stick them in with that lunch. He’s not here anymore to bake a batch of “just because” brownies for. He’s not here anymore to make sure he has clean clothes in his dresser. He’s not here anymore for me to leave the top sheet on the bed untucked on his side because that’s how he liked it. He’s not here anymore for me to send silly and inappropriate things to over text message because I know it will make him laugh.

I was just as dependent on him as he was on me

I used to half jokingly refer to my husband as “my appendage”. It would drive me crazy sometimes how attached he was to me. It felt like he was stuck to my side like velcro. Over the years though we grew to become each other’s best friend. I still had my friends but he gravitated away from spending time with his friends like he used to do before. Because of this he became more dependent on me to fulfill the role of friend for him. I wanted him to have friend relationships outside of me but for the most part he didn’t.

I took care of things for my husband that he couldn’t or didn’t know how to do. During our marriage he was the main source of income for our family. I did work at different times throughout the years but not all the time. I stayed home for a long time raising our children and took care of everything in our home. I took care of paying the bills. I knew what was due and when. I took care of all the tax paperwork every year. That was a big source of aggravation for me as he was self-employed and the receipts for his supplies took me a long time to organize. I handled all the details for everything regarding our children……school, doctor’s appointments, scouting activities, etc. I even made all the arrangements for his mother after her passing because he didn’t know what to do. I wrapped a protective wing around him when I met him because he was so sensitive and I didn’t want anyone to ever hurt him.

Like I did for him, my husband took care of things I couldn’t or didn’t know how to do. He always unscrewed all the lids on jars for me because he was much stronger than me. He reached things on the top shelf of the cabinet because I’m so short. He figured out things that required math skills because I’m horrible at math and he was good at it. He changed the air filter on the HVAC because I couldn’t reach it. He took care of getting the oil changed in the car because I never learned to do that. He changed the flat tires on the car because I never learned to do that either. He weed whacked the yard because I don’t know how to start the weed whacker. He took care of getting rid of snakes in the yard and garage because I am absolutely petrified of snakes. He was my greatest protector. He wouldn’t let anyone hurt me in any way.

My husband and I relied on each other to do things for the other. Over the years we became codependent on one another, as do many people who’ve been together for a long time. I just didn’t see that codependency until he died.

Some people slowly leave your circle after your spouse dies

I had another widow tell me that in the beginning, right after your spouse dies, people are there for you in many ways. But, as time goes by, they gravitate away from you. Your contact with them becomes less and less and some just disappear from your life. In nine days, I will have been a widow for two months. In that short time, I have already experienced what that woman told me.

I’m not sure exactly the reason for this. Maybe some people don’t know what to say beyond “I’m sorry”. Maybe they feel uncomfortable listening to you cry. Maybe they don’t want to hear the real answer to the question “Are you okay?” (because really, I am not okay). Maybe they don’t want you to spoil their happy lives with your unhappy one. I just don’t know.

On the flip side of that I have been shown the true nature of some people, both positive and negative. I guess that’s how God weeds out the people that aren’t supposed to be in your life.

I understand now why some people get married again so soon after their spouse dies

My grandmother died when I was almost 9. Her and my grandfather had been married almost 40 years. He got married again about a year after she died. At the time I didn’t understand that and I was really angry at him for doing so. I felt like he was trying to replace her, and much too soon. What went through my child brain was “How could he get married again so soon after she died? Didn’t he love her?”.

Of course my grandfather loved my grandmother. But, even more so than my own husband, my grandfather was used to having my grandmother do everything for him. She was a nurturer, too, and for her taking care of another person was intrinsic, just like it is for me. When she died, my grandfather was suddenly in unknown territory. He was thrown into a world of having to shop for and cook his own food and do his own laundry. He didn’t have her there to take care of little things she did for him that he either didn’t think about or know how to do. I can imagine he felt very lost. Maybe even scared at times. I feel scared, too. I also feel lost, but my lost is opposite than my grandfather’s lost was. I feel lost because I don’t have a partner to take care of and nurture anymore.

I see and understand now why so many people who’ve lost their spouse enter into a relationship and/or get married again so soon after being widowed. It’s because they have no one to take care of. They need to feel needed. They feel imbalanced being alone. They need to feel whole again after having the other half of them die. I will never again widen my eyes in disbelief when I see a widow or widower get involved with someone so soon after losing their spouse because I definitely feel their pain now.

Don’t take anything for granted

This one goes without saying but I’m still going to say it. If I had a dollar for every time I took something for granted over the 35 plus years my husband and I were together I’d be rich. From the little things to the big things, don’t take anything for granted, not ever.

The night before he had his heart attack my husband and I went out to dinner. Our waitress had a tattoo on her forearm that was partially covered by her sleeve. I was trying to inconspicuously read it but she saw me looking at it and asked if I was trying to read what it said. I said yes. She pulled her sleeve back and I saw that it said “Every day is a gift, not a given”. She had a red cardinal bird tattooed next to the words and told us that it was in honor of her grandfather who had raised her. She said that he used to say that saying to her all the time. She went on to say that she lives by that motto and she knew that every single day we have here on this earth is a gift and not a given. I agreed with her and told her I really admired her outlook. That young woman’s tattoo was a message for me. I just didn’t know it that night. It wasn’t until the next day while I was holding my husband’s hand as he lay unconscious in the ICU that I truly understood the depth of the meaning of that message.

During the day and a half he spent in the hospital before he passed I went over a million things in my head. Things I wished I had said to him over the years. Things I wished I hadn’t said. Things I wished we had done together, and things I wish we hadn’t. I was angry at myself for getting mad at him for stupid things and giving him the silent treatment. Those were wasted moments that I’ll never get back. I was mad at myself for all the times he went in the bedroom to watch TV and I stayed in the other room. I could have just as easily sat in the bed with him and read my book. I was mad at myself for all the times I hurried him off the phone because I was too busy to talk to him. Most of those times he just wanted to talk for a few minutes. I was mad at myself for all the times I went to sleep without kissing him goodnight because I was too tired to roll over and do so. I was mad at myself for not being more responsible in looking out for our future because “We’ll have time to worry about that later”. Unfortunately, that later came much sooner than either of us could have ever imagined.

If there was one single piece of advice I would give to anyone it’s to not ever take anything for granted. Cherish every single second you have with another person because you never know if it will be your last. Don’t waste your time being angry because that other person might die and the opportunity for forgiveness is lost forever. Tell them that you love them. Tell them that you appreciate them. Tell them you’re grateful for them. Tell them every single day, multiple times. Don’t take anything for granted, EVER, because, just like the young woman’s tattoo said, EVERY DAY IS A GIFT, NOT A GIVEN.

Today was Thanksgiving. It’s the first holiday since you left us. Today is the day people give thanks for all the blessings in their lives. Some people go around the table before they eat the meal that took all day to prepare and tell the others what they are thankful for. I went through my list in my head today. I’m thankful for my children, my grandson, my other family members and my friends. Without them I don’t know how I would have survived these last seven weeks without you.

As we sat down to eat our Thanksgiving dinner tonight there was an empty seat at the table. There was one less person there. The chair you should have been sitting in was empty. The two full plates of food you would have had didn’t get eaten. The pumpkin pie that only you liked didn’t even get cooked because you weren’t here to eat it. I only cooked the apple pie, which you would have had happily eaten along with the pumpkin pie.

There was no sports playing on the television today. There was no yelling at the players on the screen for the dumb move they made on the playing field. There was no nap in the recliner in between our usual late Thanksgiving Day breakfast and our normal dinner time. There was no asking me if the food was ready yet. There was no late night snacking of leftovers from the fridge. None of this happened today because you weren’t here to do any of it.

I realized today that this is the first of the empty seat at the table on holidays. I guess that empty seat didn’t fully hit home with me until today. I don’t know why a holiday is any different than any other day but today, on the first holiday since you left, I felt that empty seat at the table even harder than I have since you died.

I have no idea if looking at that empty seat across from me will get any easier to cope with. I know that no one can ever fill your seat because, well, no one else is you. All I do know is that life feels like a living hell right now and all I want is for you to be back in that empty seat at the table.

Loneliness is one of the unwanted companions that comes along with grief. It’s hollow, cold, dark and silent. It feels like a heavy blanket has been thrown over you that you can’t take off no matter how hard you try. There are days you wonder if you’ll ever be able to escape the iron grip it has on you.

The kind of loneliness you experience when your spouse dies is vastly different than when you’re divorced. In divorce, one or both of the partners choose to be alone and they go their separate ways. When your spouse dies, you don’t choose to be alone. It’s chosen for you because the Creator decided, for whatever reason, that it was time for your spouse to leave this earth.

This kind of loneliness is indescribable to anyone who’s never experienced it for themselves. The closest thing I can think of to try and make someone understand what it feels like is being in a forced solitary confinement. That kind of prison feels empty and desolate and it feels like you can’t ever escape it.

You have friends and family members to spend time with and talk to but they can’t fill that void that’s left behind after the death of your partner. That’s because there’s a metaphorical dance partners do with one another that can’t be replicated by any other types of relationships. It’s the yin and yang of being the other part of another person. When one partner dies the one left behind falls into an imbalance, much like when the person on the other side of a teeter totter abruptly gets off. The one that remains can’t balance it by themselves because they need their partner to help them do so.

Your partner also provides to you comfort in many different forms that those other relationships can’t give you. That comfort encompasses a large spectrum from emotional to physical and everything in between. There’s a feeling you get when you share energetic space with your partner that’s much different than when you share it with others. That feeling is comfortable and familiar, whole and complete, and no words need to be spoken between the two of you to understand it.

When your partner dies there are so many things you took for granted before that are now gone. There’s no one’s face to look at across the table in a restaurant. There’s no one to walk around with in a store. There’s no one to have a conversation with in the car. There’s no one to call in the middle of the day to tell them you love them and can’t wait to see them at home later. There’s no one to make plans with, both short and long term. There’s no one’s arm to lay your hand on top of when you’re sitting in bed reading. There’s no one to talk to when you wake up in the middle of the night and can’t go back to sleep. There’s no one to wake up next to each morning.

Now, things are vastly different. I sit by myself at a table in a restaurant, usually in a quiet corner. I’ve become that person my heart always bled for when I would see them sitting alone. I eat my bagel, drink my coffee, and read about things on my phone. There’s no one sitting across from me to talk to about anything. There’s no one to tell me how their day went . There’s no one to talk to about silly, insignificant things or matters of great importance. I stay at the table way longer than I would if my partner was still here because I don’t want to go home and be reminded that it’s just me now.

I’ve adjusted the way I buy things at the store that I need to accommodate just one person. I don’t need the large coffee creamer or the gallon of milk anymore. It would spoil before I could use it all. I don’t have to buy a large bag of rice anymore. I don’t buy tarter sauce, tomatoes or the soup with the little sirloin burgers in the can anymore because I wasn’t the one who liked those things. There’s no need to buy a large amount of anything anymore because it won’t get used like it did before.

At night I got to bed and close my eyes hoping that sleep comes swift and easy. It usually doesn’t. Sometimes sleep eludes me for hours because I lay there thinking about what I lost and can never have back again. I look at the empty bed beside me and it literally makes my heart hurt. After sleeping next to someone for 35 years you get used to hearing them breathe. The room is so quiet now with no one else in it. The silence is deafening and it sometimes feels as though I might lose my mind.

After your partner dies, there’s an emptiness to every aspect of your life. Their death overshadows literally everything and you can’t move it out from the front of your brain. It is always there like a giant plate of steel and you can only see around the edges of it. To try and cope you take things one day at a time. And when you can’t manage to do that you take it one minute at a time. Whether it’s one day or one minute, it’s at least something. As the quote from Lao Tzu goes, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step”.

I opened the dresser drawer the other day. The one you kept your socks in. There’s so many pairs of white crew socks in there because you kept buying packages of them because you didn’t like the ones you bought before. You didn’t want to get rid of the ones you didn’t like. Why, I don’t know. So, the drawer is too full.

I picked the sock drawer to go through to start putting things in a give away bag. Because you don’t need them anymore. Because you died. I figured socks are an easy thing to let go of because they are just socks. There’s so many socks in there and socks shouldn’t hold any sentimental value so giving them away shouldn’t be hard.

But, it was hard. I stood there looking at all the white socks in the drawer. Some were nearly new. Some were old. Some were the good brand. Some were the cheap brand. Some fit your extra wide feet just right. Some were too tight and made your feet hurt. Some had dirt stains on them that didn’t come out in the laundry. But, all of those socks were yours.

I picked up a pair of your socks and held them in my hand. I stood there quietly for a few minutes and looked at them. I said to myself “These are JUST socks. Put them in the bag”. I looked at them longer. I used them to wipe away the tears that I just can’t stop from streaming down my face. I put the socks back in the drawer and I closed it. I held on to the knob on the closed drawer and stood there for just a little while longer with my head down, feeling unproductive and stuck.

Today is not that day.

I don’t know when it will be that day……but, today is not that day.

I opened your T-shirt drawer numerous times, before I ever attempted to clear out the sock drawer. I took some out to look at them. There’s the many surf brand T-shirts you loved to wear ever since I met you. There’s the plain white T-shirts with stains all over them that you liked to wear to work in the hot summer because they were cooler than other T-shirts. Those should have been easy to part with, but, not today. Today is not that day.

I’ve looked through your closet at all the clothes you hardly ever wore because T-shirts and shorts or sweatpants were your usual attire. I found things hidden in the shirt pockets because you hid things in them for as long as I’ve known you. I took the old and worn leather belt off the last pair of jeans you wore. You bought other belts over the years to replace the old one but you always went back to that one with the leather peeling off of it because you said it was your favorite and none of the other ones were as comfortable to wear. I can still see you sitting on the edge of the bed, putting one leg in your jeans and then the next and then standing up to tighten the belt before finding the right hole in it without having to look where it was. Your hands just knew where that right hole was. I gave that belt to our son who said he was going to punch extra holes in it so it would fit him. That would make you happy.

I looked through all your baseball hats. You were so picky about the hats you wore. You didn’t like hats with a flat bill, only the curved ones. You would bend the bills on hats to give them the perfect curve if they weren’t just right. You had hats you only wore to work and ones that you wore when we went out somewhere. The work hats all had a permanent stain on the top and bottom of the left side of the bill where you would grab ahold of it with your thumb and fingers to adjust it. You always asked me if I could get those stains out when I washed them but I never could. I watched you put your hats on a million times over the years and take them on and off your head again till they were situated just right. Your hats squished your dark auburn curls out of the opening in the back of your hat and that’s when you could really tell you needed a haircut. All your hats are still hanging on the hooks in the kitchen and the bedroom where you left them. I can’t move them because today is not that day.

I moved your Keen work boots out from behind the kitchen door where you left them sitting next to your Stanley lunchbox and water jug. I put them in the hallway next to the rest of your shoes. You hadn’t even had those boots long enough to break them in really good. You didn’t want to spend that much on work boots but I reminded you again that the podiatrist told you to wear good supportive shoes because you weren’t a teenager anymore. Besides, cheap shoes and boots always made your feet hurt. Spending money on something for yourself was never something you liked to do and I always had to talk you into it. I see the boots in the hallway every time I walk out of the bedroom and they’ll stay there for now because I can’t give them away yet. Today is not that day.

I looked at the two new pairs of New Balance shoes you had just bought the weekend before when we rode up to the outlets in Williamsburg. You didn’t want to spend that much on shoes but I convinced you to because you needed new ones and they were on a really good sale. You wore the everyday pair you bought only once when we went out to dinner the night before, the last time I would see you awake and conscious. I don’t know anyone else who wears a size 12 double wide shoe like you did.

I left the pair of Crocs you would wear outside in the yard in the hallway, too. Our grandson always liked to stomp around the house in them. We would laugh because the shoes were giant on his tiny feet and it looked like he was trying to walk with snowshoes on. I couldn’t give them away because it might upset a 4 year old who is still asking to go find his Papa. Today is not that day so those shoes will stay in the hallway with the others.

I took your favorite Columbia jacket off the coat hook in the kitchen where you hung it the last time you wore it. I put it on to see what it felt like. I stuffed my hands down in the pockets like you used to do yourself. I took it off a minute later. I was going to put it away in a drawer or a closet but I decided to put it back on the hook hanging next to my aprons because that’s where it belongs. I touched the quilted flannel Wolverine jacket you used to wear when it was cold. I found that for you years ago in a thrift store and bought it because it was in your hard to find size. I sewed the rips up in that jacket so many times because you didn’t want to get rid of it because it was so warm. I held it up to my face and it still smelled like the wood you worked with every day, just like it always did. I don’t want to wash it because it wouldn’t smell like wood anymore, which is what you smelled like all the time. Today is not that day.

I left your toothbrush in the cup in the bathroom and your razor full of copper colored beard and mustache hairs in the medicine cabinet. I left your hairbrush on the shelf next to mine. I can’t throw the toothbrush, the razor or the hairbrush away. I don’t want to do that right now. Today is not that day.

You are everywhere in this house. Each day I look at all these things that were yours. Things that are really small and insignificant but are important to me none the less as they help me feel closer to you. Giving them away right now is just too hard. Giving them away right now feels like I’m purging you from my life. Giving them away right now feels wrong. Giving them away right now is just too painful.

I just can’t give your things away right now.

Today is not that day.

Grief is something we will all unfortunately experience at one time or another in our lifetimes. It comes in many forms and there are varying degrees of the grief we will feel. No matter that form or degree, grief is always an unwelcome visitor at your door.

When grief first comes it arrives like an angry steam roller, barreling through and flattening everything in its path. It doesn’t have eyes to see what’s in front of it so it doesn’t know what it’s destroying.

It doesn’t care that you loved something more than anything else in this world. It doesn’t care if you don’t know how you’ll get through each minute of each day. It doesn’t care that you feel like you’ve been shattered into a million different pieces that can’t ever be put back together again.

When grief moves in it hangs the heavy, dark drapes on all the windows so the sunlight can’t make its way through them. It makes everything cold to where you don’t know if you’ll ever feel the warmth again. It takes all the beautiful colors of the rainbow away and replaces them with a thousand different shades of gray.

You can try and hide from it but it won’t go away. It knows all the places you go to in hopes of it not finding you. It sees you in the dark with your head buried in the pillow. It finds you in the shower and in your car. It slaps you in the face while looking at pictures or reading a book to a 4 year old. You might think it can’t find you in your quiet place of worshiping your higher power, but it knows where that’s at, too. Grief pulls up a chair and deposits itself right next to you and it’s not leaving anytime soon.

If you try to ignore grief’s existence you won’t be successful. The longer you do try and ignore it the harder it will be to get through it. Grief most certainly will demand to be dealt with eventually so you may as well let it in the door now.

Sit with grief for as long as it takes.

Ask grief why it showed up at your door.

Cry uncontrollable tears at grief.

Yell at grief.

Be silent with grief.

Tell grief you hate its existence.

Scream at grief.

Tell grief why you’re angry.

Tell grief why you’re full of rage.

Tell grief that things are not fair.

Ask grief how long things will be like this.

Ask grief how long you will hurt like this.

Ask grief if you will ever see the light again.

Ask grief if you will ever feel the warmth again.

Ask grief if you will ever see the beautiful colors of the rainbow again.

Ask grief if you will ever be okay again.

Beg grief to never show up again.

Sit quietly with the grief that has made a permanent home inside you.

Realize that no one is immune to grief.

Come to terms with the fact that grief is a part of life and our door will be knocked on by the unwelcome visitor at some point during everyone’s time here.

These are the hands of the man I love. The man I loved from the very first moment I met him and for every day after for 35 and half years. The man I’ll never stop loving for the rest of my days here on this earth. The man who chose me to travel through life with him. A life that was happy with its fair share of sadness. A life that was often times hard. A life that we built together and one we expected to share till we both turned old and gray. These are the hands of an incredibly beautiful man who was taken away from us much too early in what feels like a terrible and unfair crime committed against us.

These are the hands that held the door open for me on our first date like all men should. They belonged to a young man of 22 who was quiet and shy. A young man that carried emotional scars from long ago that he buried so deep in an attempt to hide away his pain. A young man who found a kindred spirit in the young woman he met in his father’s restaurant. A young man who that young woman had wished for and years later would realize she had manifested into her life.

These are the hands who moved hand me down furniture into the tiny duplex on the water that was the first place we lived together. A man of 24 who was excited to be able to wake up every morning next to the young woman he loved. A man who sat outside with me and watched the boats sail down the Intercoastal Waterway. A man who rode bicycles at night with me through the quiet neighborhood we lived in. A man who never complained as he ate the food I burned in the oven because I was just learning to cook.

These are the hands that I placed a gold wedding band on when we got married on a Friday afternoon in February so long ago. They belonged to a man of 28 who stood waiting for me at the old church’s altar as my father walked me down the aisle in a light pink wedding dress. A man who I pledged my eternal love and devotion to for the life we were starting together. A man who I couldn’t believe I was so lucky to have found. A man who looked at me with faithful eyes that every woman deserves. A man who I believed could have had any other woman he wanted but who chose me instead.

These are the hands that held mine in the hallway at the emergency room when our first baby was lost to miscarriage. They belonged to a hopeful father of 29 who cried hard tears for the baby we’d never meet. Those hands held me tight through the physical pain of the surgery I had to have and the emotional pain of the grief that followed.

These are the hands that cradled our firstborn, a daughter who had hair exactly like her father. They belonged to a man of 30 who was relieved that his wife and his baby were both okay after labor complications resulted in an emergency c-section. A man who came back to the hospital in the middle of the night to see his newborn daughter again after celebrating in a bar with his sisters. A man who everyone in the nursery knew which baby was his because of the curly red hair he shared with that baby girl.

These are the hands that held our second born, a son who looked like his father. They belonged to a man of 32 who held his brand new son for just a few seconds before he was taken away and placed in a neonatal incubator to spend the first day of his life because of breathing problems. A man who took his wife in a wheelchair into that ICU later that night so she could finally hold their son for the first time. A man who felt like his family was now perfect and complete since he had both a daughter and a son.

These are the hands that bought the first house for his family. A man of 34 who was overjoyed to finally be able to put down roots in a home of his own instead of renting houses that other people owned. A man who tore out carpet and flooring to replace it before he brought his family there to live. A man who helped his wife paint glow in the dark stars on the ceilings of their children’s bedrooms to surprise them. A man who built a swing set in the backyard for his children. A man who let those children hammer the nails in the deck and garage he built at that house. A man who became good friends with the neighbors and spent many nights sitting on their porch in good conversation.

These are the hands that taught his children to ride a surfboard like his older brother had taught him so long ago. A man who watched over his children as they rode bicycles in the court. A man who lit sparklers for his children on the 4th of July. A man who took his children around the neighborhood to trick-or-treat on Halloween and taught them not to take unwrapped candy. A man who watched his children’s eyes widen in wonder and disbelief on Christmas mornings when they saw Santa’s boot mark on the fireplace hearth that he made himself late the night before with his own work boot. A man who taught his children to ride dirt bikes and skateboards, like he did himself in his youth. A man who attended all his children’s school and scouting events so they would always remember their father supporting them in whatever they did. A man who encouraged them in growing into two amazing artists.

These are the hands that bought the bigger house for his family who’d outgrown the little house they lived in before. A man of 42 who made a $100,000 down payment on the bigger house from the sale of the little house. A man who had worked long and hard to get to that point. A man who was proud of that hard work and loved coming home to a house with more space. A man who felt like he had finally “made it” by buying that big house. A man that built a skateboard ramp and a tree fort in the backyard of the big house with his son. A man that bought a trampoline for that backyard because his children had begged him for one.

These are the hands that held mine in a court room where we sat numb as a bankruptcy judge went over our assets as we tried in vain to save that bigger house from foreclosure. A man of 47 who felt like he had failed his family (he didn’t, not ever) because the economy and real estate market had crashed, causing him to lose about 80 percent of his income. A man who could never forgive himself for circumstances that were never in his control. A man that continued to blame himself for the loss of that house though it was never his fault. A man that carried a heavy burden that wasn’t his to carry. A man who didn’t want anyone to know what had happened to that big house. A man that never healed from the pain of losing that house.

These are the hands who put the alcohol down on the table one day and never, ever picked it up again after his wife and children asked him to quit drinking. A man of 49 who chose his family over the more than 30 year habit he used to numb his lifelong emotional pain. A man who quit drinking cold-turkey that day and had such strong willpower that he never had to go for treatment. A man who had to now face his emotional pain when the alcohol was no longer numbing it. A man whose raw emotions finally rose to the surface and demanded to be dealt with. A man who leaned on his wife for the strength to get through that emotional pain that had been buried so deep within himself for so very long. A man who eventually came to terms with his alcoholism and couldn’t understand why other people chose to drink their lives away. A man who could finally tell others the reason he no longer drank.

These are the hands of a master carpenter who perfected his craft over 40 years. Hands that were hard, rough and calloused. Hands that always had splinters buried deep in them. Hands that had fingernails bitten off short. Hands that had scars on them and hurt from arthritis. Hands that had blackened fingernails from hitting them with the left-handed Stiletto hammer his children had given him one year as a gift. Hands that had band-aids on the cuts he had on them all the time from the wood he carried with them. Hands that could pick up the heaviest nail gun and mitre box like they were feathers. Hands that meticulously rolled up his extension cords and never tangled them. Hands that used scrap pieces of wood to write measurements on. These are the hands of a man who built many beautiful things for many happy customers over the years who waited patiently for him to be available for their projects. A man who had many repeat customers because he was so good at what he did. A man who often had pictures of his work stolen by other carpenters and used as their own to advertise their business. These are the hands I watched draw plans for the projects he built over the years. These are the hands that wrote numbers down on paper in his messy handwriting as he figured out countless estimates over the years for the people who hired him. These are the hands of a man who valued a handshake as his word.

These are the hands that held his new grandson. A man of 54 who cradled the baby born on his daughter’s own birthday. A man whose grandson ended up with the same dark auburn curls that he himself had. A man who held his grandson’s tiny hand gently in his own giant hand. A man whose lap was his grandson’s favorite place to sit. A man who put his grandson on a skateboard and showed him how to hold his feet on it. A man who built a slide for that grandson and let him help with his own little tools. A man who colored and drew silly pictures with that grandson. A man who sat on the floor and built Lincoln Logs with that grandson. A man who played with Play-Doh and read books to his favorite little boy in this world. A man who became his grandson’s favorite person in this world. A man who forged a bond so tight with that grandson that nothing, including death, could ever break it.

These are the hands that I held tightly as the man that I love laid in a hospital bed in the ICU fighting for his life. A man of 58 who was hooked up to more machines than I had ever in my life seen a person hooked up to. A man whom I begged and pleaded with to fight against the damage his heart we didn’t know was so weakened had done to his body. A man who I tried so hard to wake up by talking to him and telling him how deeply I loved him. A man who I played videos of our grandson to so he could hear his voice. A man who I prayed so hard to God to please save.

These are the hands I held as you took your last breath. A man of 58 years, 1 month, and 9 days who should have had many more years here on this earth. A man who’s chest I held my hand on till his heart took it’s final beat. A man whose body my tears spilled all over. A man whose lips I kissed for the very last time after his soul left his body. A man whose wedding ring I took off his left ring finger. A man who’s dark auburn curls I cut to save in a plastic bag. A man whose strong arms and chest I ran my small hands over for the final time.

These are the hands I didn’t want to let go of after he left this world. A man who was the other half of me and made me feel complete. A man who had been faithful to me and I to him since the moment we first met. A man who loved me unconditionally through all our years together, even though I made it hard to do so too many times. A man who never let anyone else but me see his vulnerable side that was in so much emotional pain. A man who was my shelter and who I became a shelter for him in return. A man who was my best friend. A man who was my soul mate. A man taken away much too young and much too soon. A man who I don’t know how I’ll be able to make it through each day without. A man who I thank God for every day for bringing him into my life. A man that I’ll never stop loving even though he’s no longer here. These are the hands I wish I could hold just one more time…..and I wish that one more time would last forever.

The sepia colored pictures of my husband’s hands in this post were taken by my son for a project he was given to do at the art school he attended during high school. The project was to show a journey of some type. He chose to photograph his father’s hands and his own hands to show the journey of the older man’s hands through years of carpentry work in contrast to the young man’s hands that were not calloused and rough as his father’s hands were. They rubbed dirty rags on their hands to make the lines on them more prominent in the pictures. The dirt captured every wrinkle, callous and cut on my husband’s hands perfectly and showed the years of hard work he had done to take care of his family. My son’s pictures shows you the story of his father’s hands while what I wrote tells the story of those hands. These pictures are priceless to me and I am so thankful to have them.