November 17, 2015: That was the day I became Mrs. Keener, the day I married my best friend, the man I had loved since high school. The day I married you. It was quite easily one of the three happiest days of my life. We had been praying about marriage since we had begun dating and we decided that day, marriage was exactly where God was leading. We purchased rings and when Sawyer went to spend time with his dad, we quietly slipped off to the courthouse and said "I do". We didn't tell anyone, not our families or our best friends. It was a moment that we wanted for ourselves, we didn't want to share it and we enjoyed the time we had together privately for two weeks before finally letting our families and closest friends in on our secret. The best decision I ever made was to marry you and it is one that even in grief I will never regret. November 6, 2016: The day I became the widow of Mr. Keener. The day I became the widow of my best friend, the man I had loved since highschool. The day I became your widow. That was the day that I gained membership to the crappiest exclusive club in existence.
The club of the widows and widowers. Nope. No freaking thank you. You can just take this membership card right back. I don't want it.
I am thirty years old. I have a two year old and a two month old baby, and I had the love of my life by my side until that awful day, and quite frankly I would like to exchange that day in for the years of happiness that you and I had, had planned. I miss knowing that I was your everything. I miss knowing that you were the other half of my heart and since I didn't ask for the membership to this club, I should be able to return it and get you back in return. That is how it SHOULD work, but that is not how it DOES work and there are hardly enough words in the English language to encompass how badly that sucks.
This is by far the worst club that I have ever and one I never dreamed I would join. I am a widow. Surly that can't be my reality. I still have days when I can't wrap my head around the title and I can't help but ask myself if there has been some horrible mistake because there is no way that I have had this label attached to my life. Again, the unfortunate truth is that there hasn't been a mistake and like it or not, that is my title. I have lived through things that I would never wish on even my worst enemies. I have taken a phone call where I was forced to go through a list which ranged from organs, to corneas, to skin, and even to a pericardium and decide which could be donated to save other people's lives. I was forced to figuratively and yet very methodically dissected the love of my life, the man who had been my best friend for many years, to a person I had never and likely will never know, whom works at an Arizona donation center. I had to decide whether you would be cremated or buried. I had to decide on a headstone. I had to decide which music would be played, what pictures would be showed, who would be allowed to speak, and what I would say at a service I didn't even want to attend.
I have spent nearly two months laying in bed beside an empty space that will never be filled again. I have laid there not really getting anything close to decent sleep and praying that I wouldn't completely drown within my grief. I have had to play the role of both mommy and daddy and hope beyond all hope that they will feel loved enough to compensate for both the instant and the future effects of the profound loss they have suffered. I have felt like I no longer fit into our small groups, in with our friends, or into the my own life. And even worse because I was never able to see your body after finding you initially, I have felt what it is like not to feel like you have been able to properly say goodbye. It is impossibly painful to be forced to say goodbye to your person, the love of your life, your other half, without actually being able to say goodbye, and more than that I have had to ask myself questions I wish that I had never had to ask, like whether you thought you were loved. If you loved us, and so many more. I have had to go to social security and tell a stranger that I needed to file for DEATH benefits for my children and I. I have had to do so many things and will have to do so many more things that I should never have had to do so early in our lives. Both things I shouldn't have to do because you should be here and things that I should be doing with you
I was also forced to survive the holidays without you this year, most recently New Year. That probably sounds silly to many people but we believed that who we spent the last day of a year and the first of the next was of the utmost importance. I chose to spend it with Aria, Tahnya, and her sweet babies. I chose to spend it with them not only because I love them, but because I know that you would approve of the choice. You would have agreed that they were worthy of sharing my ending and beginning. I spent it with them, but what I wanted more than anything was to spend it with you. I wanted to kiss you at midnight and snuggle up and fall asleep beside you after the ball dropped. I wanted to wake up to you at 2017 and discuss and look forward to the future and everything that we wanted to do that year. I wanted it but I didn't get it. I cried when the ball dropped and I went to bed alone, just like I had for the previous fifty four days. I did not wake up next to you and my heart once again felt like it was being yanked from my chest by someone's bare hands. I did not get anything that I wanted, but I survived it.
I am a suicide widow, and I have met many more like me. So many more than I ever expected that I would. I can tell you though, that for the most part I have found that the widow, particularly the suicide widow is a beautiful person. This is because they have walked through more pain and anguish than the average person. They have suffered through things that should have killed them and yet they managed to survive. They are beautiful people because grief has taught them how to be. Grief is a great teacher, possibly the best, but unfortunately it comes at the steepest price. We are in a permanent state of mourning, but we have been made better in some ways, and we have been broken in others.
I am a widow. I have to walk into 2017, into a year that you have never been and will never be, and for that I am eternally grieved, but I am these things because I have loved and I have loved much more deeply than most ever will in their life and that is a blessing.
I love you. I miss you. Forever.
Always,
Jess
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