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Friday, December 30, 2016

Our life did not end up like they showed in the brochure.

Dearest Nathan,

This wasn't in my five year plan.  Heck, it wasn't even in my thirty year plan.  I was never supposed to live without you, in fact one of the first things I said after you asked me to marry you and spend my life with you, was that my one and only stipulation was that I get to die first.  I was joking, of course, and we both laughed, but you agreed and there was a part of me that was completely serious. The story that I was writing had a fairy tale ending.  We would die when we were old and grey and I'd either go first or we'd Notebook it up and go together.  This story had everything, romance, adventure, excitement, and so much more.  The trouble is that  this story, our story, did not end the way I planned.   The way I'd penned it.   It ended sad and in tragedy, I suppose many best sellers often do. You were not supposed to die before our baby was even two months old and our toddler hadn't even started preschool. You were not supposed to leave me to figure out how to live life without you....to live life on my own, but you did.   I don't think it was your intention to hurt us so badly.  I don't think you thought we'd cry every night or that Sawyer would tell me at least once a day how much he misses you.  I think in the moment you were stuck in a deep dark tunnel and you couldn't see a light at the end of it.   I think you hurt and this was the only way you could see to end it.  I don't know what your last thoughts were, but I don't think that they were pleasant and thusly I instead like to think of you in your last happy moments.  I like to believe that in that moment you were thinking of us and your heart was filled with joy.

 I find the idea of moving on, meeting someone new, appalling.  Impossible.  Intolerable.   Revolting even.  People tell me not to write it off just yet, but they just don't understand, I had my fairytale, it simply ended sooner than I would have liked.  That said, I am beginning to find a path.  That's the thing about grief, it causes you to question and reevaluate everything.  I am continuing to go to school, my bereavement leave ends in January, I purchasing a house and should close in February.  I am able to stay home with my children for the time being and I know I want to do something in the future to not only raise suicide awareness, but help other survivors.  The trouble is that I have found a path but I have not found myself.  She went with you and I am doubtful she has plans to return.

I saw Becky's parents today.  I always enjoy my visits with them, I wish that they would have been able to meet you though.  I think you would have loved them and I am sure they would have liked you.  We talked a lot about you, about our life, and even about that night and I realized a lot of things I hadn't before.  I realized that I have more peace than I thought.  I realized I still can't be angry with you. I realized that in my sorrow I have been immensely blessed.  I have realized that I am already seeing some good come from this.  This isn't what I wanted.  It still hurts.  I have a hole in my life and I will always have grief, but I am glad that I can see more than just darkness.
 
Our life did not end up like they showed it in the brochure, I have lost you and I have lost myself.  My fairytale ended in an ugly way, but that's okay, I have a path and I will write the rest of our story with only myself and my babies.


I love you.  I miss you.  Forever.

Always, 
Jess

Wednesday, December 28, 2016

I didn't know what it was like to be unable to breathe, not wanting to breathe, and yet breathing anyway

My darling, Nathan,


There are moments when I think I am happy, moments when I am with friends or with family and we are laughing and smiling at a joke that someone made, but then those moments end.  I go home and as day turns into night, I am consumed by unexplainable sadness, something that can't be ignored or forgotten because it is etched into my heart as if it were a tattoo.  I lie in my bed, next to the empty space where you should be and I think about all the things that I wish I could say to you.   Nights were my favorite time with you, when the chaotic busy that came with the day had faded away and we had nothing left to do but lie together and get lost in conversation.  Now it is in the night that I realize I am many things, but mostly I am just empty and lonely and missing you always.  It is in the night when I am forced to reconcile with the fact that healing from your death will take the rest of my lifetime, however long or short it might be.

Someone told me that I would start healing after your celebration of life service because that would be when it began to feel real.  This person meant well, but they were wrong.  So very wrong.   Healing doesn't start then, instead that's when the grief really sets in because everyone around you heads back to their own life and you no longer have a distraction keeping you from thinking about your nightmare.  It feels real, but I continue to have moments where I forget reality and continue to think that you might just walk in.  The service really did nothing, but confirm what I already knew, it would have been easier to lose my own life than to have lost you, the life I loved more than my own, the service showed me that it's hard to wake up from a nightmare when you aren't even asleep.

I guess that's not true.  I guess it did one other thing, it served to show me that although I had experienced loss and grief, I had, up until all of this happened, never experienced the kind of grief that shatters your entire life.  I did not know what it was like to wish that the floor would open up and swallow you.  To experience a loneliness so great that you become an empty shell of the person that you were. I had no idea what it was like to go from living to simply surviving, to feel as if you barely have any air left inside of your lungs because your grief is literally suffocating you.  I had never experienced a grief so intense that you wake up in the morning still exhausted.  I didn't know what it was like to burst into tears in the middle of the grocery store just picking up a container of  ice cream. I didn't know what it was like to be unable to breathe, not wanting to breathe, and yet breathing anyway.  I did not understand this type of grief and I wish I didn't understand it now.

Sometimes I wish I could trade shoes with someone.  I wish that I could trade the shoes of the young widow, the shoes of the young widow with two small children for another pair, a happier pair.  A pair in which you are still standing beside me.  I wish this and yet, if anyone were to ask me, I know that I would say with the utmost conviction that I would never trade being your wife.  The only wife that you ever had, will ever have.  I hate these shoes and everything that comes with them and yet, simultaneously I feel like the luckiest woman alive.  I feel like the luckiest woman because I was able to love and to hold you.  I just wish I could hold you again....even if just for a moment.

I am buying a home.  It has a piece of you in it, but I am not happy about it.  I am not necessarily unhappy, but I am not happy.  It's something we should be doing together and the truth is that I don't truly feel like it will ever be home, because you won't be there and you were my home.  You were my heart and I don't think I will ever feel like I am truly home again.  There are no words to appropriately encompass what that feels like.  What losing you has felt like.

I guess the truth is, I am never really happy, I simply have moments where I'm a little less sad than others.


I love you.  I miss you.  Forever.


Always,

Jess










Tuesday, December 27, 2016

I don't feel like I fit into my world anymore.

Nathan, love of my life,

It's been six days since I've written to you.   144 hours.  8,640 minutes.  518,400 seconds.  86,400,000 milliseconds.   I've had many reasons for this.  Most of them don't matter, but the two biggest are simply that traveling with two children without you was exhausting and time consuming and secondly, I think I was hoping that if I let some time go by, when I finally wrote, I would be able to write something other than "my heart's still breaking" or  "I don't want to live a life in which you're not in it" or the most cliche of all the things a widow could say "I need a drink.  A large one.  Maybe a vodka and soda, hold the soda."  Unfortunately, all of those things still ring true and now I almost feel as if I've done you a great disservice by allowing so much time to lapse.  I almost feel as though I've abandoned you in some weird way.  I know anyone reading this will probably tell me that I haven't. but that's because they don't understand that sometimes I feel as though this is the only connection to you that I have left.    They are probably also judging me for knowing how many milliseconds it's been.  Little do they know, I know down to the millisecond how long you've been gone.   I won't share that here though.  I will save it for another time and possibly another place.  I think at this point I need to resign myself to the fact that this really won't get any easier.  No matter how much time goes by or what I do with this life, it is not going to get easier.  It is always going to hurt.   I am always going to miss you.  Long for you.  Feel jipped of the life we should have had together.  

No, this is never going to get any easier than it is today.  It will get different as life goes on and changes, but it will not get easier.

I have good moments, days when I find peace in many things.  Many things like the fact that you're finally with your mom, that you finally have peace, and that you didn't plan to leave us, it just happened in a moment.  However, night always comes and in the night my heart is full to the brim with sadness, confusion, longing, loneliness, and so many dang questions.  Why did you have to leave me?  Why didn't you know that I needed you? I told you all the time.  Why couldn't it have been someone else?  Why didn't we get a better ending?  Why didn't God stop this from happening?!  I know the answer to that last one, but I will never like it.  I think one of the reasons that this won't get any less painful, any easier, is because when you left me you took a piece of me with you.  A huge piece.  A piece of me that I can neither get back nor replace.  I'd give up my entire life for one more conversation.  One more hug.   To hear you laugh one more time or feel you kiss my forehead one more time.  Hell, I'd give up everything to simply watch you hold our daughter or laugh and play with our son one more time.  Just one more time of one more anything.

I have so many regrets.  So many things I wish I'd said and even things I wish that I had said more.  I told you I loved you.  I told you I thought you were brilliant and amazing.  I told you that you were a wonderful dad,  and an even better husband, but I didn't tell you enough.  I didn't tell you enough to make up for the times that I didn't tell you.  When I was too busy to appreciate you.  I didn't tell you enough to make up for the times that I was negative and hurt your feelings and I didn't tell you enough to make up for the times that life was too busy for us to realize it was passing us by so quickly.  I told you I appreciated you.  I wish I would have told you more.  No, scratch that, I wish I would have shown you more.  You told me I was an amazing wife.  You told me I amazed you and that you were lucky to have me, but now that you're gone, I don't feel that way.  I feel exactly the opposite and that makes it so much more difficult to deal with all of this.   This must be the reason they call the grief that comes with losing someone to suicide complicated.  

I took you for granted.  I am sorry.  I love you.  I appreciate everything that you did for me, for our family.  You went above and beyond and it never went unnoticed, even in the moments when it likely seemed that it did.  I guess I just always assumed that we'd have more time.  Years.  Decades.  Forever.  You weren't perfect in our relationship, but you were perfect for me, and if I had known how little time we truly had, how this would end, I would have done so many, many things differently.  Too little too late, now, I suppose, but I want you to know that I am so proud to be your wife, to carry your name.  I am proud to be the mother of your daughter.  I am proud to say you were an amazing father to my son.    You accomplished SO much even when life was dealing you a crappy hand and I think you deserve to not only be acknowledged for that but remembered.  To be talked about and praised.    And I will do all of that daily.  

The kids had a beautiful Christmas full of love and laughter.  I managed to survive Christmas.  Nearly every night after I was in bed, I'd cry, but I survived nonetheless.    It's strange to say I survived it, rather than enjoyed it, since this used to be my favorite holiday.  I used to tell you that I had to love it, being that I was born a Christmas baby.    You'd laugh and roll your eyes.  I loved everything about it though, the lights, the tree, the decorations, mostly I loved the time with family and other loved ones, but that last reason, is the reason that it was so hard this year.  Why I wasn't sure I was going to get through it, because the person I loved most, that I still love most is no longer here to spend it with me.  Leading up to the dreaded day, I was asked several times, by several well meaning people what I wanted, what I needed, what I was hoping to get, I never had an answer.  I said it was because I hadn't had time to think about it, but that wasn't the truth.    Not even a little bit.  I had thought about it several times, but no one could get it for me.  No one will ever be able to get it for me, because all I want is the one thing I can't have and that's you.  The life we were meant to have.  I want our children to have their daddy.  I want to continue making memories and having family vacations with you.  I want you to teach our son to drive a car and take our daughter to a father/daughter dance.  I want to have the wedding we always talked about after we got married at the court house (still don't regret that by the way).  I want my life to go back to the way that it was.  I want the things that we hoped for together.  I want the life I shared with you back, because even though it wasn't perfect, it was ours, we were together, and I was happy.

I think that's what made this almost unbearable, because I was thankful to be with my family.  To have them to love on our children.  I was thankful and I was glad to be there and yet I hated to be there at the same time.  Actually, I feel that way any time I am around my family and anytime I am around yours.  Not because I don't want to be there or because I don't love them, but because it is hard to watch everyone with their significant others, with their complete families and be reminded that I don't have you, that my family is permanently incomplete.  Don't get me wrong, I don't wish this on them.  I don't wish this on anyone.  I just wish it wasn't my reality, that I didn't hurt every time I was around a couple and I am by myself.  I wish I didn't have to feel jealous or hide posts on facebook that contain family pictures or engagement announcements, but I do.  I am happy for them, but my heart simply can't take it.  My grief has brought me so many wishes that won't ever come true.

I don't feel like I fit into my world anymore.  

I love you.  I miss you.  Forever.

Always,

Jess







“I feel like I’m in the wrong world. Cause I don’t belong in a world where we don’t end up together. I don’t. There are parallel universes out there where this didn’t happen. Where I was with you, and you were with me. And whatever universe that is, that’s the one where my heart lives. I never used to believe that love was real. Now, after loving you, I don't believe life is real without it. This is why it feels so impossible to let you go, because no matter what happened, how bad or good things were in our relationship, I was thankful for it because I needed it. I needed you in this life"



Wednesday, December 21, 2016

Almost. But that is the funny thing about almost, it never quite is...

Dearest Nathan,

I woke up this morning and just laid there staring at the ceiling.  After a few moments I looked over at the wall beside the bed, the K wall, as I call it.  It was your favorite wall in our home, second possibly to the cartoon of us that hung in the bedroom.  I stared and stared at your pictures.  I studied every inch of your face, I took in every detail of your smile and of the sparkle in your eyes and wondered how this could happen to someone who looked so happy.   I wondered what or how I had missed something so big.  There had to be signs right?  If there were they went right over my head.   I wondered how this could possibly be my life, had I really just celebrated my thirtieth birthday and made an offer on a house, and had I done both of those things without you?  No, this had to be a dream, you were going to knock on the door at any moment,  You were going to text me and apologize, tell me you were running late and had accidentally left without saying good bye and you'd see me tonight.  This wasn't my life.  This could not possibly be my life.  I could not have spent the day with you on November 6 only to have everything turned upside down that same night.  Life as I knew it could not possibly have ended at 8:04 pm on November 6, 2016.  Nope.  I was not a widow at thirty.  I almost had myself convinced that I could pinch myself and wake up and everything would be back to normal.  Almost, but that's the funny thing about almost convincing yourself of something, you never quite do.

Reality smacked me in the face, hard.  You are still gone.  I am still raising two kids alone.  I am buying a house by myself.  I am packing a bag to head to my sister's for the holidays and your clothes will not be folded and neatly packed beside mine.  You won't complain about me making you put our two year old son in a suit and you won't get to see how beautiful our daughter looks in her Christmas dress or comment about how awesome the Christmas bow that Erin bought her is.  I am still a widow at thirty and although I wish life as I knew and LOVED it had not changed  at 8:04 PM on November 6, 2016, the harsh reality is that it did and it's something I have to remind myself each and every damn morning.  

I don't want to spend Christmas without you.  I don't want to spend the next 30 plus years without you.  In high school,  not only were you one of my best friends, you were my dream and then in adulthood you were my dream come true.  I was blessed to have you, to hold you, and to love you.  I was blessed to have you love and to teach and to play with Sawyer and I was blessed to watch you love and snuggle Aria, and I was blessed to watch you take great care of them both, even doing the things that weren't fun at all like changing diapers, giving baths to our son who screams like a banshee when his face gets wet, and so much more.  You were an amazing, husband, father, and man.  You went above and beyond not only to provide the essentials but the fun stuff too like our incredible trip to the zoo, the wild animal park, and sea world.  You were what every girl should want in her life and you are the type of man I will pray that Aria-Lyn will find and that Sawyer Wayne will be.

God is good even though this doesn't feel good.  He will bring blessings and goodness from the ashes. God is good even though this doesn't feel good.  He will bring blessings and goodness from the ashes. God is good even though this doesn't feel good.  He will bring blessings and goodness from the ashes. God is good even though this doesn't feel good.  He will bring blessings and goodness from the ashes

That's what I keep repeating and reminding myself over and over and over and over again,

You would be happy to know that our sweet community is loving us in your absence and through our grief.  We have been so blessed with not only donations, meals, and help packing and moving, but with Christmas presents.  Everyone has gone above and beyond and the fact that they have done this has given me time to spend taking care of all the business that came with your passing and figuring out a new routine and what surviving looks like for me and our littles.  My parents also gave Sawyer the track that you thought was so cool.  He was so excited.  I wish you were here to use it with him, you both would have so much fun.   Also awesome is that a friend sent both kids, soft photo albums, I am going to fill them with pictures of each other them with you.  A great way for them to remember you.

I spent my birthday with my Aunt Darlene, Gary, Tiffany and Derek, and Alyssa and Chris.  They took me and the kids to dinner and were even sweet enough to get me gifts.  We went up to your dad and Sue Ann's after that and celebrated Christmas with them early.  They blessed us too.  Your brother Caleb finished the bike you started for Sawyer.  It's amazing, exactly what I think you were hoping it would be and just like you knew he would , he loves it.  Absolutely loves it.  He will tell anyone who will listen that his mommy, daddy Nathan, and Uncle Caleb built him that bike.  He is so proud.  I wish more than anything that you were here to see his genuine happiness and sparkle in his eye everytime he not only sees it but talks about it.  This was not what I wanted for my birthday or my life and I admittedly have a Nathan shaped hole in my heart that aches terribly, but despite that, all of these amazing people brought my heart a bit of joy.

I went to a mom's group event today.  You'd be happy about that and my heart needed that extra love.  People that knew you were there and expressed their grief and love for you.  That did my heart so good.  I am so happy even in my sadness, that those that knew and loved you are still remembering you and will eventually share their memories of you with our sweet ones.  

Outside of that I drew up two new tattoos.  Both are done in your memory.  One is a bass clef and treble clef on a staff.  The treble will be teal and have your name and dates in it and the bass will be purple with your mom's name and dates. On the right is your Soldier of God symbol tattoo, I turned it into a semi colon using part of the bass clef.  That part will be red, your favorite color.  On the left will be a phrase from a letter that you wrote me and your signature, all in your handwriting.  The phrase and the bass clef form a heart.  It will go on my rib cage and I think you would be pleased with my design.  I will save my other rib cage to eventually get something for our sweet babies.  The other tattoo says Just Breathe, below that is an arrow, on the arrow is a semi colon, and beneath that says warrior.   Every single part of that tattoo will be white EXCEPT for the semicolon which will either be red or purple and teal, I'm still debating. It will be on the inside of one of my forearm. That will be a good reminder for me when things get hard that you would want me to keep pressing on and that I CAN do this.    You know this already because we had discussed it before, but the semicolon is used when an author could have decided to end their sentence, but chooses not to.  It is used for suicide and mental health awareness, when used like that the person is the author and their life is the sentence.    And the arrow.  The arrow can only be shot by pulling it back.  The idea is that when life is doing everything it can to drag you back with struggles, it will eventually launch you into greatness.  I think you would love it.  I am hoping to get the forearm tattoo with Tyler while I am in California.  He has a semicolon tattoo and I believe you would think that was cool.

Gosh, I wish that neither of these were necessary.  I wish I wasn't buying a home with social security. I would never get another tattoo again if it meant I could have you back.  I would live in a box, if I could live with you.  My heart hurts, but I am surviving and I think you'd be proud of that, at least for the moment.

I love you.  I miss you.  Forever.

Always,
Jess












Monday, December 19, 2016

I am failing at widowhood, but really who would want to be successful?

Dearest Nathan,

One thing that I have realized since you died is that the media loves a widow.  Seriously, ninety percent of the Christmas movies I've seen have had a widow or widower as a main character and the same goes for most of the sitcoms on television, particularly the ones that gain the most momentum and popularity with viewers.   Don't believe me?  Weeds:  The mother, Nancy is a widow.  Carol Brady?  Widow.   Rebecca in This is Us?  A new widow.  Shirley Partridge?  Widow.  Danny Tanner?  Widower.  DJ Tanner-Fuller?  Widow.  I could continue, but I will spare you as I am fairly sure that you get the picture.  Grief sells.  It captivates the audience.  It is even more likely to grab the attention when it's a man or woman left without their love and finding their way through single parenthood.  It's like a car crash, people can't look away. Grief and loss open the door for many good plot lines that will keep people watching.   I get it, I liked a few of those shows when you were still alive.   We watched the first season of Fuller house together, I watched This is Us when you were working late or on the weekends, and as a kid/teen I simply could not get enough Full house.  Since you've been gone, however, this has changed.  I tried to start the second season of Fuller house.  I was actually pretty excited, and thought I would start by watching the first season again, just to refresh my memory.   Within the first fifteen minutes of the first episode I watched a new widow laugh at jokes and even crack a few of her own.  I watched her navigate parenting an infant and two older children with ease and even a touch of grace, help a friend's dog birth puppies, and do it all while looking not only put together but fashionable.  She was in a word, impressive.  Even her breakdown when she went upstairs to put her infant son to bed, which her family members heard via a baby monitor wasn't that severe.  In fact, as a new widow myself, I would even go as far as saying that it was mild.   It made me feel extremely insecure, I started to cry and I had to stop watching.

I am not up to par with the sitcom widow.  I have not remarried a charming man with three of his own children nor do I have a desire to do so.  I am not touring the country in a retro bus with  musically inclined children in our very own family pop group, I am not providing a lavish life for our two children via drug dealing, and I am certainly not running my own veterinary clinic while wearing the latest designer fashions, taking kids to sports, and doing so without shedding a tear.  No, I have shed many tears and I likely wouldn't be able to provide much at all for them if it weren't for social security.  The social security we are blessed enough to receive because YOU were such a hard working, wonderful provider.

In regards to the sitcom widow, I am failing.  I have not fallen in love, I have not found and succeeded in a new career OR succeeding in a career at all.  I'd have to first have a career for that and I have not found my calling in volunteer work.  The only thing I've done that some sitcom widows have done is move.  I moved in with my parents and have put an offer in on a home.  Otherwise, I feel as though you'd look at our life and see exactly the same one we had before you left me, except that tomorrow I will be older and all of us are a little sadder, particularly me....I am consumed in grief but learning how to hide that from those around me.

I can picture you rolling your eyes and saying TELEVISION IS NOT REAL.  WHY ARE YOU COMPARING YOURSELF TO TELEVISION?  STOP.   You're right, obviously.  TV is not real, if it were doctors would look like McDreamy and McSteamy.  They don't or at least they do not in our small town, but despite the fact that they aren't real, these widows are doing something that I have not yet figured out how to do, they aren't just surviving, they are living.  That is admirable.  Very admirable.      I am surviving but I still feel as though I am failing at widowhood, but then again, who wants to be successful at something so dang awful and besides, what exactly classifies as successful, who decides?  Is there a chart or a rulebook for widowhood?  I don't think so and if there is I haven't found it.

I think what I have to remind myself is that no one is actually doing widowhood and widowed parenting better than me, they are simply doing it differently and that is okay.

Unfortunately for me, unlike a sitcom widow, whom have a laugh track and clapping for what they should consider happy and/or funny moments, I live in reality.  A reality in which my gaping wounds are continually re opened and deepened by each and every birthday, anniversary, and holiday that I am forced to not only acknowledge, but celebrate and celebrate WITH a smile, without you.   I, unlike the sitcom widow am forced to live in a reality where I am sometimes so exhausted from both grief and responsibilities that come with being a single parent, that I can barely convince myself to get out of bed let alone get out of bed, go to the gym or put on makeup.   No, I am not a sitcom widow, I am a real life young widow with children.  I am a real widow whose life was shattered forcing me to figure out how to not only rebuild but to survive and the fact is that for now I must simply be okay with just surviving.

Maybe I will always be just surviving, but that's okay.  Just surviving is okay because that is better than the grim alternative of not surviving.   No, that is not an option.  I must be okay with just surviving because that is all I can do, and I must do it because our children need me to.  They deserve to have me survive. I am not a sitcom widow, but I am a widow who loved her husband more than words could possibly ever express and who misses him just as much.


As I say in every letter, I love you.  I miss you.  Forever.

Always,
Jess




Sunday, December 18, 2016

Public Service Announcement: Everything does NOT happen for a reason.

Dearest Nathan,

Everything happens for a reason.   There isn't a single statement that I think I hate more than this one.  I hate that it implies that this was something that had to happen in order to see personal growth. I hate it and I wish that people would stop saying it.  They mean well, I have found that to be true ninety five percent of the time, but it doesn't make that statement any less horrible.  People don't mean to instigate emotional and psychological violence with those words.   In fact I believe in most situations they are meaning them to bring comfort.  The problem is that they imply that things can be fixed or that in the end you'll see that whatever it is had to happen in order for you to better yourself, but here's the thing, regardless of how they do or do not make someone feel, they are categorically untrue.

Why?  The answer is simple, somethings can not be fixed, they can only be carried.  For instance, losing you can not be fixed, I can only carry the pain, shoulder the burdens that come with the loss, and pray I can survive.  Everything does NOT happen for a reason. In fact, if we are honest, we would admit that sometimes good doesn't come from the bad that happens in our world.  No, sometimes it even destroys lives and unfortunately I think that sometimes that is due to the fact that we are very quick to replace grief with stupid platitudes that do nothing but hurt us more in the long run. Everything does not happen for a reason.  We simply say that in hopes that having a reason or believing that there is one, will somehow make a sucky situation less sucky.  Everything does not happen for a reason.  There wasn't a reason for you to die.  There wasn't a reason that I had to lose you or that our children must grow up fatherless.  There was not a reason, no matter how badly we wish that there was.  The truth of the situation is this:  There was not a reason for it, God simply allowed it because we live in a fallen world and neither he nor his army of angels will impede on our free will.  You made a choice and he let you make it and as is the case with all situations, it came with consequences. If there is growth in this situation, it will be because I, your kids, and/or your friends and other family, have chosen to respond to the horror that has been bestowed on us, in a way that allows for it.

There is no reason that I should have had to finish the Christmas shopping for our children, by myself, without you.  There is no reason, it is just the reality of the situation and something that I am learning to live with, and in case you were wondering I did finish the shopping and I did it without shedding a tear.  I think the tears will come later tonight.  Maybe not.  Maybe this will be the first night that I will be able to say that I have made it an entire day without any emotional break down.

Gosh, I understand the widowhood effect now.  I've understood it since the moment that you died, but in writing the last two paragraphs I can say I understand it more deeply now.  Very deeply.

Any home that I live in from now on will be my home rather than ours.  I have things of yours that I don't know whether to keep or dispose of in case I need them later on, they are a remnants of a life that no longer exists and one that I had no intention of losing.  I will take our kids to their first days of preschool by myself.  I will cook dinner for three instead of four, and I will sleep in a bed with an empty space beside me for the rest of my days.  I am two days and some hours away from being thirty and I am a widow.

Did you know that the widowed are two times more likely to end their lives within the first year of losing their spouse?  This particular statistic goes up if they've lost them to suicide.  Don't worry, I'm not suggesting that I might be having these thoughts.  I'm not.  Like I've said time and time again, our babies need at least one of us and obviously it has to be me.   It's just a statistic that goes with the widowhood affect.  Actually, statistics show that widow and widowers are actually more likely to die in car accidents, from heart attacks, cancer, etc....  I realize this sounds strange since these seem like random events, but again this is the widowhood effect.  We have a twenty two percent higher risk of death than the married population.  There are multiple studies that prove this.    These statistics are higher in young widows, those that are in their 40s and 50s.   Those that are widowed in their 30s like me?   Well, we also are more prone to death than our married counterparts but not in a number that is statistically significant.    I am not saying that it is insignificant.  Not at all, it is simply that there are two few of us widowed in this age group to make a marginal difference. We do not make a measurable difference because their are too few of us.

We are too few and far between to be significant.


Seems fitting.....that's how I feel on a daily basis since I lost you.

Maybe tomorrow will be better.

Maybe it won't.


Either way.....I love you.  I miss you.  Forever.

Always,

Jess




Saturday, December 17, 2016

I physically feel twenty but both mentally and emotionally I feel ninety five

Dearest Nathan,

I have started and restarted this one thousand times, but today I am tired.  No, I am exhausted. The kids woke up in revolving intervals last night and I was reminded why God created the family unit the way he did.  We aren't meant to be single parents and we certainly aren't meant to be a single parent to multiple children.  I desperately wished for you last night.  I desperately wished for you to hold Aria-Lyn or to comfort Sawyer, but once again, when I reached out for you I was met with emptiness. The job of parenting and everything that comes with it now completely and entirely rests on my shoulders. You are no longer here to take over when I am overwhelmed and that is a hard pill to swallow, but even harder to swallow is the fact that you were so excited to be a parent and you are missing out on so many moments that I know you would have loved.  

Yes, I am exhausted and I think it has taken a toll on my words.

I took our kids to see Santa, I have answered 100 texts, and I went to look at the house again. Despite my grief and the exhaustion it has brought on, I have gone through the motions today the same way I have since the night I lost you.   Mostly I have done it for you because I think that you would want me to ensure that our babies have a good Christmas in spite of everything and so a good Christmas they will have despite the dread it brings me personally.  Speaking of Christmas, I spent the better part of a week trying to figure out what I thought you would want me to have.  I finally decided that instead of getting something that I didn't need, I would buy the woman who lost her husband three days ago in the same manner that I lost you, a fingerprint necklace, and I would do it in your honor.  I think you would love that, you always had a heart for people, the broken and the suffering in particular.    Aside from all of that, Andrew invited me to go to the movies today with he and some friends, I wasn't able to go because my baby sitter was sick, but I think you'd be pleased that so many of your friends are ensuring that we aren't forgotten.

Other than dreading Christmas, I am also dreading my birthday.  Thirty.  A milestone.   I am not worried about the age itself.  It's just a number after all. And in truth, I physically feel twenty but both mentally and emotionally I feel ninety five.  No, I am not bothered by the number itself.   It's simply that this is my first birthday without you, I don't feel I have much to celebrate this year and frankly, when I pictured my thirtieth year, it did not include being a lonely widow with two children under the age of three.  No, quite the opposite.  I pictured this birthday and all those following to be full of life, laughter, and most of all you.  I've said this many times recently, but life is not fair and mine has been altered in such a profound way that I was never prepared for and quite frankly it's hard to contend with that and thus it is hard to contend with turning thirty

I have had many people offer to celebrate with me and so I will attempt to enjoy the day, but for the most part, I will just miss you.  You made holidays and birthdays so special.


I love you.  I miss you.  Forever.

Jess





Friday, December 16, 2016

You were so quiet and brave, people didn't realize you were suffering....

Dearest Nathan,

Why did he do it?  It's a question I've gotten from many people and one that I have asked myself time and time again.


I have talked to many survivors of suicide recently and most have said the same thing, they don't understand and they certainly didn't see it coming, my experience was no different.  I knew of your past pain, I knew that sometimes you suffered depression and anxiety, but you assured me that it was nothing I had to be too terribly concerned about.  We talked about the friend we lost over the summer to suicide and we agreed that we didn't understand it.  We agreed that for us, nothing could ever be that bad.  And not only that, most days you seemed happy and content in the life that we lead.   In fact, you would tell anyone who would listen how much you loved me, how proud you were of our children, and how excited you were about our future.   I knew what a strong man you were, a fighter.  I knew what you had overcome in your past and so had anyone told me that this would happen, I would have laughed and shook my head.  As far as I was concerned, you could have overcome anything and you would.

I have heard so many similar stories and I've realized the truth in the matter is that most people who commit suicide often seem to have it all.  Like you, most who complete suicide have a loving spouse, a great job, and beautiful children to fill their home.  They are always smiling and laughing and helping others.   That's the trouble though isn't it?  Our society has created such a stigma where depression and anxiety are concerned,  that we have been taught that "it could always be worse"  "This too shall pass"  and "Fake it until you make it", but what happens when it doesn't pass and you just can't fake it anymore?   Asking for help is a sign of weakness and admitting you might not be as okay as you appear could be an insult to your friends and family.  It's bull if you ask me.  We need to be a voice for these people.  We need to let them know that they aren't alone and even more than that we must tell them that asking for help is NOT an insult or weakness.

Ugh.  You told me once that the only opinions you cared about were God's, mine, and the kids.  I hope you weren't silent in your suffering for my sake or for the sake of the children, because had we known what you were shouldering, we would have helped you carry it.  We would have supported you and helped you.  We would have loved you through anything, just like we continue loving you through our loss of you.  You were our shining star.  As far as we were concerned you hung the moon.  You could do no wrong in the eyes of our children and in my eyes there was nothing that you could have done to make me stop loving you.  N-O-T-H-I-N-G!

I feel so heavy and everything around me feels so empty.  How can emptiness feel so heavy?  It's one of life's greatest oxymorons.   I am so sorry that you hurt so badly.  I am so sorry that you felt this was your only way to save yourself from your pain.   I am just sorry.   The only thing that helps me now is knowing that you have the peace you so longed for, even if I now carry the hurt that was once yours because if this burden is the price I pay for the love we shared, it is a price I gladly pay.


We love you.  We miss you.  Forever.

Always,

Jess




Thursday, December 15, 2016

I want to feel normal again...

Dearest Nathan.

I thought today could be considered a good day.  I approved your headstone without shedding a tear.  I almost cried, but I didn't.  I talked to a new widow and shared our story with her in hopes of making her feel less alone, I almost broke down, but I held it together.  I went to our small group Christmas party, I shared memories of you, looked at some of Jenn's photographs, I asked some questions I wasn't sure I wanted the answers to, fortunately the answers weren't as devastating as I thought they might be, and shared our baby and I did it without having a meltdown.   I was proud of myself, I had accomplished a first, a day with no tears.  I spoke too soon though because now I am home.  I am home and I am still without you.  I am home and there is still an empty space on the couch where you should be sitting beside me and there is still an empty space in my queen size bed where you used to lay.  I reach out into the emptiness and am met with instant heartache and with that heartache comes tears.  So much for a tear free day.  It's quiet.  Too quiet.  So quiet that I think I may be swallowed up by it.  I long to hear your voice tell me that it'll be okay.  There are so many things I long for.    Death, no matter the circumstances, is no friend of mine.

The first week after your death, the only question that I had, that I constantly asked myself, was why.  Why couldn't I save you?   Why wasn't the love we shared enough?  Why weren't our kids enough?  It's an awful question and it takes a toll on the asker.  I have, realized, that it wasn't that I didn't love you enough or that what we had wasn't enough, it was simply that you didn't love yourself.  I know it had nothing to do with our babies, in fact, I truly believe that you were in pain, that you may have been suffering from un-diagnosed illness and that in a moment you were consumed and couldn't see a way out.  I truly believe that if you had taken a minute to think it over, you'd still be here with us.  That you loved us so much that if you had considered what you were doing you would have stayed with us.   I know all of this in the deepest part of my heart and soul and I know that I will never fully understand either.  From there I spent several more weeks wrestling with the question WHAT IF.  If I am honest, I still sometimes wrestle with this, but I also know that the guilt I have must be separated from responsibility.  I feel guilty for what I did and didn't do and what I said and did not say, but ultimately I have come to the realization that this was your choice.  No one is responsible for this, but you.   It's been rough coming to grips with the answers to both of these questions and I still have moments where I slip back into trying to figure it all out and when I replay everything over and over again in my mind, but for the most part my question has changed.    Now I ask two questions:  What would you want for the kids and I?  and What do I want?

That's a big question with an even bigger answer.  I want many things.  I want you back.  That's not going to happen.  I want to feel normal again.   I don't remember what that feels like and thus probably won't happen either.  I want to do all the things we planned, but I want to do them with you.   I don't want to miss you anymore.  That's laughable, I will miss you until the day I die.   So many things that I want that I won't ever get and besides that, I guess what I ultimately want is an escape.    An escape from grief, from pain, from my life in general.  An escape, that offers me a chance to breath and rest.  A reprieve if you will.  I want off this merry go round of crazy and of grief. Just for a minute.  I promise I'll get back on as soon as I recoup some energy.

I wish I could clear my head.  I wish I could steady my heart.  I wish I could take a succession of deep breaths.  I wish I could close my eyes and be without responsibility for just a moment.  I wish I could connect my spiritual self with my mental self, with my emotional self, with my physical self.  I wish I could just connect and not feel so fragmented.  I wish I could get used to my new life.  I am beginning to think I will never accept or be used to any of this.

God this hurts.  It hurts even when I think I'm numb and I think when I am numb that just means I am ignoring the pain better than I usually do.


On another note, I made window decals in your memory (I put a picture below).  Originally, I just offered them to certain friends and our families, but now I am considering selling them and using the money to start a scholarship in your memory.  I think you'd like that.  I haven't decided whether I want to give this scholarship to kids whom have lost a parent or to kids that have a passion for music.  I suppose I have time to figure it out.  Lots of details to iron out.  I think this is a good way to honor you.

I love you.  I miss you.  Forever.

Always,
Jess


Wednesday, December 14, 2016

My life is filled with Nathan shaped holes and daily reminders to breathe....

Nathan love,

I've said this so many times since you died, but I will say it again, I wish you had known how loved you were, how many people appreciated you, how many people needed you, and how many people you impacted.  I wish you could have seen yourself through my eyes.  I wish you would have been able to love yourself the way that I loved you.  The way that our children loved you.  So many people miss you.  It's hard to refer to you in the past tense.  I hate it.  It hurts and if there is one thing I am tired of, it is hurting.

There are many empty spaces in my life now that you are gone.  So many holes.  Nathan shaped holes that can never be fully filled again.  There is an empty space on the couch where you used to sit beside me, your hand intertwined with mine, while we watched friends or talked about our days.  There is an empty space in our bed where you laid beside me, my head on your chest, the sound of your heartbeat lulling me to sleep.  I still can't bring myself to sleep in the middle of the bed.  I stay curled up on my side and hope that maybe I will wake up from my nightmare and you'll be beside me.  I know you won't be, I'm not delusional, but I can hope, I can wish, and I can dream.    Mostly, there is an empty space in my heart.   It is empty and it is hollow.  It feels as though I could say your name and it would bounce off the walls of my insides.    I feel empty and when I say your name, it falls flat because there is no one beside me to hear it anymore.

I looked at the house that I told you about yesterday.  The one you did tile work in.  It's beautiful.  I think I am going to make an offer.  I feel pain just thinking about it though.  I don't want to live in a space that you've never lived in.  It makes everything that much more final and that much more real.  I should be mad at you.  I should be so mad because when we married I told you my only rule was that I die first.  You agreed.  You agreed and then broke that rule  and yet I still am not mad at you and I think I've finally come to the conclusion that I probably won't ever be.

Your dad text me today and let me know that the funeral home called.  The draft of your headstone is ready.  I read that text and felt like someone had punched me in the stomach.  A headstone.  I should be planning for our Christmas vacation to my sister's.  We should be watching Christmas movies and wrapping presents for the kids.  We should be talking about New Years and all our plans for 2017.  I should not be by myself and I should not be approving your headstone.  I am not looking forward to tomorrow and taking yet another step in this journey that I never asked to be on.

I still do not understand why.  I still struggle with the what ifs.  I struggle with a lot of things actually.  My life has been permanently altered and not for the better either.  Although I know that my pain will never go away, that it may never even get better, I am holding out hope that it will get easier to carry.  Until then I am reminding myself to breathe.  In and out, in and out.  It's the only way to get through a full 24 hours.


I love you.  I miss you.  Forever.

Always,
Jess




Tuesday, December 13, 2016

They say that time heals, but I still hurt. I hurt the same as I did the night I lost you.

Dear Nathan,

I think I could start each post with "Today was hard".   I won't, but I could.   It would be honest.   They say that time heals, but I still hurt.  I hurt the same as I did the night I lost you.  It hasn't gotten easier, not even a little bit.   Even if time does eventually ease the pain it doesn't matter.  It doesn't matter because in this current moment, in the present, it still hurts.  It still haunts me.  It hurts so intensely and is so alarmingly haunting and yet it is a feeling of emptiness.  It is an ache so deep that I feel it within my very soul.   I can feel it in every part of my body and even in the air around me.  There is no escaping it, only learning to live with it.  And I have learned to live with it, I've gotten good at going through the motions so that few people actually have to see my pain.  My heart hurts within me, but I have not lost my ability to get up and survive for our children.  I pack my grief neatly away in a box and leave it there until the sun goes down and I am alone in my bed, where I can cry in private.  I neatly pack grief away in the morning and make an appointment with it for later in the night when I am alone and able to self care.  Of course there are times when the box is unexpectedly turned upside down and the contents are spilled all over the ground and I struggle and scramble to force it back within it's box....contain it.  For instance, turning in the keys to our rental today, the lid was ripped off and grief poured out  It also found me at the bank when I finally changed the last name on my account.  The gentleman asked how long ago I'd married, I said a year and he congratulated me.  The grief almost consumed me and I didn't have the heart to tell him that you had died.  It almost happened again when talking with a mortgage broker, fortunately, I felt the lid being removed and was able to quickly force it back down before anything fell out.

I met another suicide widow recently through a support group. She lost her husband and the father of her son two months before I lost you.  She is young like I am.  Her son is young like our children.    It is a sad reason that has brought us together, but nevertheless I am thankful for Kayla because in talking to her, I feel at least slightly less alone.  She understands in ways that most others do not.   It is friendship like this and the ones that I share with Tahnya, Lindsey, Aaron and a few others that make surviving this possible for the moment.  I wonder if they realize that?  Probably not, but I am still thankful.

Speaking of the loan broker, I was pre-approved for a fairly significant loan amount.  It is bittersweet, so very bittersweet.  On the one hand, I am thankful that I will be able to have a place of my own, a place to raise our children, where they will be safe and loved.  However, I can't help but feel as though this is a type of blood money.   I know you would laugh and shake your head at me saying that, but it's how I feel.  I can't help it, because the fact is that I wouldn't be able to buy a home if you were here.  It's not that we didn't make enough money, we did, but your credit was terrible and not for any fault of your own.  My credit is good, but I didn't make any money, so together there wasn't much that could be done.  You had to die to make our dream of owning a home a reality and that makes me sick to my stomach.    Maybe eventually we would have been able to do it together, but it sure wouldn't be now.

Kayla gave me a new perspective, though, she said to remind myself that YOU bought this home for our children.  It wouldn't be possible without you, regardless of how it happened.   You are making this home possible for our children.  You are forever providing for our family whether in life or death and someday when our kids are older I will tell them that we have this house because of you, that you were such a hard worker, that you were able to buy this home for them and someday when they are older, if one of them wants this home I will give it to them and they will be able to make their own memories and raise their own family and know that it is only because of you that it is possible.

I am thankful for what you did and continue to do for our family, but if I am honest I would rather be destitute and forced to live in a box WITH you than to live in the nicest house WITHOUT you.  I am lonely.   It's a strange thing, being without you.  When I am with people I want to be alone and when I am alone I want to be with people or maybe it's simply that my heart wants to be with you.  I don't really know.   It's like I told someone today while explaining this to them, I am in a lose/lose situation.  I suppose the key is to do both in moderation.  To spend time both with people and alone, it doesn't really matter because either way I am still without you and either way I am still lonely.   In the moments that I am extra lonely I wear your cologne.  It makes me feel close to you.

I miss you.   I love you.  Forever.

Always,
Jess




Monday, December 12, 2016

I am spinning and floating around with no one to catch me before I hit the ground....

My dearest Nathan,

I have never been all that open with my emotions.  In fact, we used to talk about how you were the only one that was able to get to that part of me.  I could cry, scream, yell, laugh with you.  I could be open and vulnerable.  I could share my most private thoughts with you.  And yet, until you died I wasn't aware that I could cry this much.  That I could cry so often.  I cry when debt collectors call about your student loans.  I cry when friends and family ask me how I am doing.  I cried when I went to social security and they asked for your death certificate.   I cried again when I realized that the last time that I had been in that building was when I was changing my name from WHITE to KEENER.  And most of all,  when I have to tell a new person that you have died, my heart stops beating briefly.  I feel like I am suffocating and feel like someone has stabbed me straight through the stomach.   I don't like that feeling and it hurts and because I do not like that feeling and I do not like the immense pain that feeling causes, I cry.

My meltdowns aren't pretty.  In fact, sometimes they are downright ugly.  I say nasty things that I never would have even thought prior to losing you.  I sob and feel nauseous.   I get angry with God and I beg for you to come home.  I cried a lot in the first week, I hyperventilated when I saw your dad the night you died, but my first meltdown in which I saw an ugly side of myself happened the day of your funeral.  I saw a homeless man walking down the street, I looked at my friends and asked why it couldn't have been him.  I said that no one would miss him and even if they did miss him, they already did so it wouldn't have made a difference.  I said, we shouldn't have to miss you, it wasn't fair and went on to say that I also didn't think that it was fair that people who hate their spouse, fight and yell, and say cruel things and don't even really want to be with them still get to keep them and I wanted nothing more than to grow old and make memories with you, I had a planned future and dreams I was looking forward to with you and I didn't get to keep you.  It isn't fair.  We shouldn't have to miss you.  You were young, we had so many more years that we should have had with you. Our kids shouldn't have been robbed of you.  It's during my meltdowns that I get angry.  So angry, but never with you.  Never with you, but with God and with my circumstances and with the bullshit of free will.  I get angry with myself, that I didn't save you, that I couldn't save you.  That I couldn't love you enough to make you stay.

Since that first meltdown, I've had several others.  For instance, the first time I tried to listen to Thy Will after your funeral, I got .4 seconds in before a meltdown was triggered.  I had another meltdown when I not only reread all the letters and songs you had written me, but I found the place where you had kept all of the letters that I had written you.  I think that was partially because I hadn't realized you had saved them all.  I went through all of your shirts, cue meltdown.  I saw the wine we were meant to share on our anniversary, another meltdown.  Sometimes simply looking at our children is enough to make me breakdown. I never know what's going to trigger these and that's the worst part.  They are unexpected and they shake me to my very core.  I suppose it is in the moments of meltdowns that I feel human because when I am not having a meltdown, I am numb.  I am so numb that everything is blurry.  Everything is blurry, nothing feels real, and I am going through the motions of surviving without really knowing how I am doing it.

Despite the meltdowns, yesterday I managed to sleep peacefully for a full five hours.  That's a rarity since you passed away, however I dreamed of you last night and I felt you next to me, I felt your hand in mine and even though I am sure anyone who stumbles across this letter will think me crazy, I know you were beside me.  It was comforting to feel that and yet it was painful to wake up and have you still be gone.  I reread so many of our texts and even though they made me sad, they also touched my heart so deeply because your words to me were so full of love.  Especially one in which you explained to me that you loved our children because you loved me first.  It breaks my heart that you are gone.  It breaks my heart that you took your own life, but I do find a small amount of peace in the fact that I know you loved me truly and completely up until you took your last breath.  I am hurting.  I am broken.  I am grieved.  I am missing my best friend and my soulmate.  And yet, despite these things I am blessed.   I am blessed because I was given not only the chance to be your friend for almost twenty seven years, but I was given the chance to love and to be loved by you and to have a family with you for the best year of my life.   I am lucky because you loved my son as your own and more than that, you taught him what a real man is meant to look like and I know that he will carry you with him for the rest of his life despite his age and he will be able to share you with his sister in a way that no one else can.  Thank you for everything my love.


I love you.  I miss you.  Forever.

Always,

Jess





Saturday, December 10, 2016

I will never be able to go back to the way that it was and more than that I will never be able to go back to the person I was before I lost you.

My dearest Nathan,

Tomorrow will be my final day in our house.  In the home we shared together.  My last day going to the house where we said we'd live until we were able to purchase a home together.   The home that we were going to raise our children.  The house that you took your last breath.  Tomorrow will be my last day going to the house we called our home and that together we were so excited about.   The house that we saw a future in, that we made plans and dreamed in.  I am both relieved and torn up about this all at once.  I am conflicted because this house stopped feeling like a home the night you died,  my heart died in that house,  but in this house is one of the last places that I am able to hold onto hope that you will come home.  The last place that I am able to hold on to hope that this has all been some impossible mistake and you aren't really gone or maybe I am stuck in a never ending nightmare and I just need to figure out how to wake myself up.  I realize it's been a month and that many feel that I should have accepted this by now and moved on, but how do you accept the unacceptable, how do you move on from the love of your life, the man that was supposed to be in every future memory?  It's like I asked you in another letter, how do you learn to live without the person that you can't live without?  I still haven't figured that out.

At the start of this anytime I went to the house I spent more time on the floor sobbing than actually accomplishing anything that may have been considered useful, but thankfully my sister and her family, parents, and women from both my mom's and our small group stepped up and packed up the inside of the house.  They came with a plan and packed up most of it in a day.  They didn't ask a single thing of me, I helped a little bit with Aria-Lyn's room, but mostly I just sat in a corner with Tahnya and cried.  No one said a word and they certainly didn't judge me.  They have been wonderful and I am so blessed at the way that they and the rest of our community have really surrounded me in love.

I have had to deal with the garage on my own and I only cried once today.  In fact I even laughed a few times, because I always teased you about the fact that you may have been a borderline hoarder and having to go through your things has just reassured me that my teasing wasn't out of line.  I found birthday cards from 2004.  Yes, birthday cards that were nearly twelve years old.  I didn't keep those.  I even parted with the textbooks I'd been begging you to get rid of since we first got married.  I found things that I don't think you ever wanted me to see and I've found things that I have had to research just to figure out what it was.  There were several things I couldn't bring myself to part with, even though I don't have a use for them.  I kept all your CDs despite not being able to listen to music right now I even kept the mix CDs that you made.  I will listen to music again someday, I am determined and when I am able I will use them in the Supra once it's done.  I think this would make you happy since music was our big connection.

I guess my real issue is that even though they tell me that you'll always be with me, that you're always in my heart I feel somewhat like I am leaving you.  I realize that you will be no more gone than you already are but on the nights where the grief overwhelms and I really need you, I will no longer be able to close my eyes and imagine you in our space the way that you once were.  I won't be able to stand in places you once stood or stand in the living room with my eyes closed and envision you dancing with me the way you once did.  I still listen for the garage and pray that you will walk in.  I still hope that we can fix this and go back to the way that it was and we can have the life that we were meant to have, but I know we can't.  I will never be able to go back to the way that it was and more than that I will never be able to go back to the person I was before I lost you.

I've said this before but I will say it again, grief is a strange and haunting thing.  No matter how many people I am surrounded by or how many texts I send or receive or how many people call me, there is still a loneliness that has seeped into the deepest parts of my heart and soul, that I can't seem to shake and at the end of the day when it's time to climb into bed and sleep, I am consumed by an isolation and a grief that I simply can't explain.  In my mind I envision our house, the home that we were supposed to have, it's surrounded by yellow caution tape and on the door is a sign that reads GRIEF LIVES HERE and in the window is another:  BEWARE OF LONELINESS.  I close my eyes and slip into a  world where crying is a nightly affair and my cellphone is a lifeline to a world outside of what can only be described as a grief zone.  I slip into a world in which I am able to mourn freely without prying eyes.  I am free to grieve in my own way.  This world breaks my heart and yet it heals my heart as well because when I close my eyes and enter this world I can meet you again even if it's only for a short time.

In the morning, after I leave the only world where I can see you anymore, I look at myself in the mirror and I don't recognize myself.  My face is too young to belong to a widow.   My eyes give me away though.  They seem permanently sad, even when I smile they show what a liar I am. It's as if all my pain had no where to go so it floated up and settled there within the brown and gold flecks that make up the color of my eyes.  To be honest, I should come with a warning of my own so that people know what may greet them if they choose to talk to me.  An emotional wreck.  Broken and incomplete.  Broken and missing her other half.  Lost and never to be the same again.  

My heart is in pieces, my soul is in shreds.  I am in a grief zone and I am lonely.  Nevertheless, tomorrow I will move and tomorrow I will survive and then the following day I will break and then maybe the day after that I will begin to heal, but I am not making any promises.


I love you.  I miss you.  Forever.

Always,

Jess



Thursday, December 8, 2016

Grief is downright ugly and it does not care about suicide or grief and it certainly doesn't care for the widow.

Nathan Baby,

I don't listen to music anymore, not for lack of trying.  Believe me, I have tried many times, but it always seems to trigger a wave of uncontrollable grief that rips whatever may be left of my heart to shreds.  I think this would make you sad because that was one of many things that we really connected over.   I don't sing either.  I don't sing while I'm doing mundane things around the house, like folding the laundry.  I don't sing while I'm in the shower or in the car.  I don't even sing to our kids anymore.  This would also make you sad.  You always told me that you loved to listen to me, something about putting joy into your heart.  In fact, you even tried to convince me that we should both join the worship band at church.  You liked to tell me that we were wasting our God given talent if we didn't.  I was vehemently against this.  Firstly, I simply didn't feel we had the time and secondly, I really don't do well speaking, singing, or being in front of people, so when you would make the suggestion I would laugh, shake my head, and remind you that I am the girl that almost fainted the day she was baptized because too many people were watching. You usually sighed and said that for the moment you'd be content with my allowing you to listen, but you would also tell me that you would try and convince me in the future.I think that's why I can't bring myself to do it anymore, I don't feel much joy and in the fleeting moments where joy finds it's way to me, singing would just make me miss you and grief would replace that joy.   Actually, if I am truthful, even the background music that plays in stores makes me sick to my stomach.  I want to turn it off.  I want to run from it.  I want to buy ear plugs and wear them everywhere I go.  This is particularly true of songs like Nothing Else Matters by Metallica, the first song you ever played for me and the one that you continued to play for me during our entire marriage and of our song, Thinking Out Loud by Ed Sheeran.  Every time I hear the first song I think of sitting in the bedroom, daydreaming about our future while you smiled at me and played your bass. I didn't know then how short our future would be.   The second song makes me think of the many times you'd put it on and danced with me in our living room.  You'd hold me close and I'd breathe you in trying to remember every detail of the moment down to the way you smelled.  I'd dance with you and in that four minutes and forty one seconds, nothing in the world mattered but you and I.    I wish I had tried harder to memorize every single moment that we had together, even the ones that didn't seem to matter at the time, because I long for them now.  I had so much joy when you were alive, now I have grief.

Grief.  I have lost many people in my life.  My mother, my best friend, other various family and friends.  I knew what it was like to hurt.  I knew what it was like to cry over loss and to miss someone so much that you couldn't breathe and I knew what it was like to pause to call someone before remembering that they were gone.  I had experienced all of these things more than once,  but I had never experienced a grief like this.  I had never experienced a heartache so deep that it was earth shattering.  A pain so intense that not only did it knock the breath out of you, but you suddenly realized why people said you could die from a broken heart.  I had never experienced something so entirely life changing that I wasn't sure how I would survive.  I had never felt so alone with so many people around.  I had never experienced the type of longing that causes you to cry out to God, begging him to just take you to be with your loved one.  Begging him to just put you out of your misery.  I had never experienced a loss that was so hard to accept, that for the first week after the loss, when there was a knock on the door, I would leap out of  bed, sure that I would see you standing there ready to explain to me what a mistake this had been and how you were so sorry for the misunderstanding, but you were back now and we could carry on with our lives as planned.  A loss so hard to accept that I would wait for you to call me on your lunch break or to text me at the end of the day to let me know you were on your way home.  I still wait for these things sometimes and sometimes when I come around the corner to head back to my parents house I see our car and smile thinking you're there, but I remember much more quickly now that you are gone.   I had never in my life experienced such a profound loss that I went from living to simply surviving.

Grief is overwhelming and exhausting.  It is especially overwhelming because it comes with impediments and I am honestly ready to hand over control of the "business" that comes with dying to someone else.  Unfortunately, being that I am the wife, I do not have this luxury.   Some days, I feel like I have entered into some weird board game that I can't get out of.  Take one death certificate to the DMV.  Change the car titles and move two spaces forward.  Whoops, it hasn't been thirty days, go back one space.   Have father in law order one birth certificate, move one space forward.  Take one birth certificate, death certificate, proof of work, and proof of children to social security and move forward three spaces.   Call to have car towed to B&B for storage, move two spaces.  Get a storage shed and move out of home, move four spaces.  Forget to send death certificate to school loan agencies.  Move back to square one.  You may now continue grieving for the day.

Then there are days when I feel like I have been removed from the board game and instead placed in a scavenger hunt.  Find Nathan's birth certificate, find Nathan's social security card.  Find Nathan's school loan paperwork.  Find the car titles.  Find Nathan's computer passwords.    Congratulations, you have now found everything but Nathan.  Life still sucks, your reward is sleep so that you can wake up and deal with all of this bull shit again tomorrow (sorry for the language, mom).

I am sorry for the language, but honestly, the business of dying is exactly that.  Bull shit.  It is messy and it is painful and it is downright ugly.  It does not care about suicide.  It does not care about grief and it most certainly does not care for the widow or for the children left fatherless.  I am ready to have you back.  I am ready to have our life back.  I am ready to sleep peacefully and to go an entire day without shedding a single tear.  I am ready to smile at my kids and mean it when I say that everything is okay and I am ready to not have my heart break every time that our son asks where you have gone and I have to remind him that you are in Heaven with Jesus.  I want to watch FRIENDS with you, I want to plan to have dinner with our parents, I want to watch you hold our daughter and play cars with our son.  I want to yell at you for being on Keener time and for driving too fast.  I want to remind you to buy dog food and ask you to go get me a cup of ice from the gas station.  I want to take a cruise and take the kids to Disneyland with you like we planned.  I want to cuddle with you in bed and kiss you good night and I want to wake up to you kissing my forehead each morning like you used to do before work, before you left us.  I want us to have in depth conversation about the bible and God, I want us to laugh until we cry, and to dream about the future the way we used to.  I want to wake up to you instead of the horrific truth that is my reality.

I want to be loved.  No, correction, I want to be loved by you.  Yeah, I know you still love me.  I know you're still with me, but I want you to physically be here with your arms around me, telling me that you love me.


Obviously, that isn't going to happen.  None of what I want is going to happen.  It's not fair.  Life isn't fair, what a crappy and truthful cliche.

If I have learned anything it is this:  Do not judge the bereaved wife.  She comes in many forms.  She is breathing, but she is dying.   She may look young, but inside she has become ancient.  She smiles, but her hearts sobs.  She walks, she talks, she cooks, she cleans, she takes care of the children, she works.  She IS, but she IS NOT all at once.  She is here and she looks whole, but part of her is elsewhere and will be until the day that she dies.

Until we meet again in Heaven and I hear your voice telling me once more that you love me,

I love you.  I miss you.  Forever.

Always,
Jess




 
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