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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