Dear Nathan,
From the very start of this horror, I have said that there would be good that came from this. That beauty would come from the ashes because you deserve that, I deserve that, and most of all our children deserve that. And so after the initial fog lifted and I made it past the first two weeks of the nightmare that had somehow become my life, I started talking. After the realization that even if you're living in a nightmare, you simply can't wake up from your life finally set in, I started telling our story and I haven't stopped. I have been candid in both my pain and with exactly what you did. I have no secrets. I will answer just about any question that someone asks me, and I have had my share of inappropriate questions, suggestions, and comments. They've made me angry, they've made me sad, and they've flat out mind boggled me, but I have handled them with as much kindness and dignity that I could possibly muster because this isn't about those people or even about me. It's about the fact that if I am not speaking out, if I am not advocating, then I am doing a disservice not only to the great man that you were but to the love that we shared, to your pain, to my pain, and to a great many others who may carry around this type of pain.
I am becoming a part of the problem if I am hiding my pain, the kind of pain that is all consuming. The kind that swallows you whole as you lay in bed trying to will yourself to fall asleep. The kind of pain, that finally helps you to understand why they say that sleep is a cousin of death.
I speak out because we need to be aware. People need to know that suicide is real. Traumatic brain injury is real. Mental illness is REAL and no matter how you hide from it or try to push it to the darkest recesses of your mind, it is real and it will continue to be real and ugly and awful until we stop hiding. Until we pull it out to the middle of the room and push our thumb into the huge gaping wound that it is, it will be real and we are failing the people around us. I refuse to be a part of the problem. I refuse to be part of the stigma and the shame. I couldn't save you, but if your story, our story can save someone else than I have somehow in some small way righted a wrong that can't really be righted at all.
That said, I need prayer. As I am sure you recall, our church, just before the sermon launches, shares a life story. They're beautiful stories about good coming from the ashes, light shining in the darkness, and the ugly becoming beautiful. They are stories that need to be heard and I have been asked to begin the process of sharing ours.
The first stop on the journey is to type out the story.
Seems easy enough for someone who has used writing both on facebook, in a blog, and various media outlets on the world wide web as her platform for sharing. Should be easy for someone who has begun the process of writing a book, right? You would think so, but you would be wrong. I have sat down to write it out several times in the last two weeks and have deleted what I manage to get out and given up. I start to write and I suddenly feel as though there isn't really a story to be told here. There isn't anything to say that anyone should or would want to here. There is only a dull ache in my heart and the reminder that my children are growing up without the daddy that loved them so much and I am going to bed by myself again.
I can literally feel every ounce of hope draining from my body, every ounce of hope that I usually try to give to others suddenly seems to be running for cover.
I know that there is a story and I have hope and I know that I need to share that hope, but something in me just shuts down.
It'll come. I know it will. It always does, but for now....for now it seems impossible.
As always I wish you were here to help me battle this, but I guess if you were here I wouldn't be battling it. It's a catch 22, if there ever was one.
Whatever.
I love you. I miss you. Forever.
Saturday, September 30, 2017
Wednesday, September 6, 2017
Maybe I just couldn't love you enough....
My darling Nathan,
I remember the day we decided to take our 26 year friendship to another level. You had been through a string of bad decisions, broken hearts, and disappointments. I had too and yet you were everything I wasn't, and I think that's what attracted me to you. There were a thousand things about you that drove me crazy, but just as usual; I picked the ones who were the absolute worst for me.
Although it was what I had always wanted, I didn't think we'd work as more than friends back then, but it quickly evolved into exactly that…something that worked. What we considered "dating" was really just two people learning about each other. Late night phone calls where we'd talk about anything and everything, late evening sitting in your truck, we'd share a bad cup of coffee from a gas station, getting completely swallowed up in conversation. I knew I was in love with you about a week later. I had never been so sure of anything in my life. We got married exactly a month later. We talked about the future, growing old together, about how we wanted a daughter, and about how if we simply couldn’t fathom how either of us would ever survive without the other. I was in love with you. Almost everything about you.
Things weren’t perfect. Nothing ever is, of course, and anything worth having takes work. We had a difficult season. It was so hard, but we fought through it. We fought and clawed our way to the other side and came out standing. And not just standing, but standing beside each other, hand in hand. We had a daughter, to complete our family. Sawyer adored you as much as I did. We were in a new home. We were FINALLY through what I was sure would be the hardest season of my life. We were finally sharing more laughs and smiles than we were sharing tears and heartache. We were finally happy and everyone who saw us in that time says the same thing. We appeared so happy, looking forward to the future. We were. Or I thought we were. I was naive. I should have known that things can always get worse than the worst that you think they’ll be and they did. We were in a happy place and you still took your life and for me, things got a thousand times worse than they had ever been before. I am surviving but it’s painful and it’s not the life that I wanted for me or for my children. What's left of the life we had is shattered into pieces, and there's so many I don't know where to begin to put them back together. I'm good at picking up the pieces and putting them back together, I've done it many times, over and over. This time the pieces don't seem to fit together like they did before.
I've replayed conversations in my head. Over and over, on repeat until I wish there was a way that I could make it stop. "Promise me you’ll always be there. Promise me, that we’ll get through anything together.” I should have known, but I guess I was blinded where you were concerned. "I promise. I’ll never leave. I’ll always weather the storm right beside you.” Yeah right. After everything that’s happened…all I can say is yeah right.
Why didn’t I see this coming? You were my person, my heart, how did I not see this coming? That’s one of the many questions that I ask constantly and as much as I wish I could turn off what I feel, it's there. I’ve had people tell me to move on. As if that's something as simple as just saying "I'm going to move on." As if it’s as easy as deciding what you’re going to eat for breakfast. As if I can magically stop loving you, and decide that I didn’t want and expect to be married to you for the rest of my life. "Every day gets easier..." It doesn't. Some days it’s harder. Most days it’s not easier or harder, it’s just different. I heard someone say that the pain from the loss of a spouse changes, it stops feeling like someone is stabbing and suffocating you all at once and becomes more like the pain of arthritis. Not as all consuming, but still there and though you can ignore it some of the time, it’s impossible to ignore it all of the time. You can get through the day but it’s still always there. Maybe I still have some days that are harder because we share the most amazing daughter. And we have a son that still says he wishes you could come home. That he misses you. Our beautiful girl and that handsome boy are the best part of my life; they are my happiness. They are perfection in an imperfect world.
I guess I just want to know why everyone seems to get a perfect little family and we didn’t. My pain most days now, is much more arthritic than a gaping stab wound, but that doesn’t take away from the difficult moments in which I want answers that aren’t coming, that won’t ever come. It doesn’t take away from the times that I miss you, like when I forget to take out the trash because that was always your job. The days when I need something fixed and I have no idea what the hell I am doing, but I have to figure it out because you’re not there anymore. Or like how I have no idea how I’ll explain everything that’s happened to the kids when they’re old enough to comprehend. How I’ll make them believe that you loved them and that if you could have you would be there to watch him take vows to his wife and walk her down the aisle to her husband. How are they ever going to understand this when I don’t even understand.
All I know for sure is that you did something that wrecked so many things and so many people, but I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I’ll keep saying it until I am blue in the face. I forgive you. I’m not angry. I never have been. Mostly, I just want you to know I don’t think of you as a mistake. You were a blessing even after everything.
Even through everything that has happened I have loved you. I have loved you every minute, everyday. I loved you through the hard season. I loved you through our triumphs. I loved you through the trials of parenting Sawyer and through the birth of our perfect daughter. I loved you even when I hated you and I know that you are gone, that you can’t come back, that my life has to keep going on without you, and that I likely have a long time before I’ll see you again in Heaven, but I can promise I will never stop loving you because of what we share and because you never stop loving your soul mate. I wish I knew how you got to the point that you did or how we could have fixed it or what you were feeling in that moment, but those things don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. Choices were made, and although I didn’t get a say in the biggest choice that altered my life so profoundly, what’s done is done.
I’ll just end with this, I prefer to think no one could have loved you the way I did and still do, maybe I was….maybe I am wrong. Maybe I just couldn't love you enough. Either way, I’ll see you in Heaven, love.
We love you. We miss you. Forever.
I remember the day we decided to take our 26 year friendship to another level. You had been through a string of bad decisions, broken hearts, and disappointments. I had too and yet you were everything I wasn't, and I think that's what attracted me to you. There were a thousand things about you that drove me crazy, but just as usual; I picked the ones who were the absolute worst for me.
Although it was what I had always wanted, I didn't think we'd work as more than friends back then, but it quickly evolved into exactly that…something that worked. What we considered "dating" was really just two people learning about each other. Late night phone calls where we'd talk about anything and everything, late evening sitting in your truck, we'd share a bad cup of coffee from a gas station, getting completely swallowed up in conversation. I knew I was in love with you about a week later. I had never been so sure of anything in my life. We got married exactly a month later. We talked about the future, growing old together, about how we wanted a daughter, and about how if we simply couldn’t fathom how either of us would ever survive without the other. I was in love with you. Almost everything about you.
Things weren’t perfect. Nothing ever is, of course, and anything worth having takes work. We had a difficult season. It was so hard, but we fought through it. We fought and clawed our way to the other side and came out standing. And not just standing, but standing beside each other, hand in hand. We had a daughter, to complete our family. Sawyer adored you as much as I did. We were in a new home. We were FINALLY through what I was sure would be the hardest season of my life. We were finally sharing more laughs and smiles than we were sharing tears and heartache. We were finally happy and everyone who saw us in that time says the same thing. We appeared so happy, looking forward to the future. We were. Or I thought we were. I was naive. I should have known that things can always get worse than the worst that you think they’ll be and they did. We were in a happy place and you still took your life and for me, things got a thousand times worse than they had ever been before. I am surviving but it’s painful and it’s not the life that I wanted for me or for my children. What's left of the life we had is shattered into pieces, and there's so many I don't know where to begin to put them back together. I'm good at picking up the pieces and putting them back together, I've done it many times, over and over. This time the pieces don't seem to fit together like they did before.
I've replayed conversations in my head. Over and over, on repeat until I wish there was a way that I could make it stop. "Promise me you’ll always be there. Promise me, that we’ll get through anything together.” I should have known, but I guess I was blinded where you were concerned. "I promise. I’ll never leave. I’ll always weather the storm right beside you.” Yeah right. After everything that’s happened…all I can say is yeah right.
Why didn’t I see this coming? You were my person, my heart, how did I not see this coming? That’s one of the many questions that I ask constantly and as much as I wish I could turn off what I feel, it's there. I’ve had people tell me to move on. As if that's something as simple as just saying "I'm going to move on." As if it’s as easy as deciding what you’re going to eat for breakfast. As if I can magically stop loving you, and decide that I didn’t want and expect to be married to you for the rest of my life. "Every day gets easier..." It doesn't. Some days it’s harder. Most days it’s not easier or harder, it’s just different. I heard someone say that the pain from the loss of a spouse changes, it stops feeling like someone is stabbing and suffocating you all at once and becomes more like the pain of arthritis. Not as all consuming, but still there and though you can ignore it some of the time, it’s impossible to ignore it all of the time. You can get through the day but it’s still always there. Maybe I still have some days that are harder because we share the most amazing daughter. And we have a son that still says he wishes you could come home. That he misses you. Our beautiful girl and that handsome boy are the best part of my life; they are my happiness. They are perfection in an imperfect world.
I guess I just want to know why everyone seems to get a perfect little family and we didn’t. My pain most days now, is much more arthritic than a gaping stab wound, but that doesn’t take away from the difficult moments in which I want answers that aren’t coming, that won’t ever come. It doesn’t take away from the times that I miss you, like when I forget to take out the trash because that was always your job. The days when I need something fixed and I have no idea what the hell I am doing, but I have to figure it out because you’re not there anymore. Or like how I have no idea how I’ll explain everything that’s happened to the kids when they’re old enough to comprehend. How I’ll make them believe that you loved them and that if you could have you would be there to watch him take vows to his wife and walk her down the aisle to her husband. How are they ever going to understand this when I don’t even understand.
All I know for sure is that you did something that wrecked so many things and so many people, but I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I’ll keep saying it until I am blue in the face. I forgive you. I’m not angry. I never have been. Mostly, I just want you to know I don’t think of you as a mistake. You were a blessing even after everything.
Even through everything that has happened I have loved you. I have loved you every minute, everyday. I loved you through the hard season. I loved you through our triumphs. I loved you through the trials of parenting Sawyer and through the birth of our perfect daughter. I loved you even when I hated you and I know that you are gone, that you can’t come back, that my life has to keep going on without you, and that I likely have a long time before I’ll see you again in Heaven, but I can promise I will never stop loving you because of what we share and because you never stop loving your soul mate. I wish I knew how you got to the point that you did or how we could have fixed it or what you were feeling in that moment, but those things don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. Choices were made, and although I didn’t get a say in the biggest choice that altered my life so profoundly, what’s done is done.
I’ll just end with this, I prefer to think no one could have loved you the way I did and still do, maybe I was….maybe I am wrong. Maybe I just couldn't love you enough. Either way, I’ll see you in Heaven, love.
We love you. We miss you. Forever.
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