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
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