15 Months Later

I was reading my Facebook memories yesterday, as I do most mornings and had this pop up. 

Widowhood is more than missing your spouse’s presence. It is adjusting to an alternate life. It is growing around a permanent amputation. 

Widowhood is going to bed for the three hundred and sixty fifth time, and still, the loneliness doesn’t feel normal. The empty bed a constant reminder. The night no longer brings intimacy and comfort, but the loudness of silence and the void of connection.  

Widowhood is walking around the same house you have lived in for years and it no longer feeling like home. Because “home” incorporated a person. And they’re not there. Homesickness fills your heart and the knowledge that home will never return haunts you. 

Widowhood is seeing all your dreams and plans you shared as a couple crumble around you. The painful process of searching for new dreams that include only you amount to climbing Mount Everest. And every small victory of creating new dreams for yourself includes a new shade of grief that their death propelled you to walk this path.Widowhood is second guessing everything you thought you knew about yourself. Your life had molded together with another’s and without them you have to relearn all your likes, hobbies, fears, goals. The renaissance of a new person makes you proud and heartbroken simultaneously. Widowhood is being a stranger in your own life. The unnerving feeling of watching yourself from outside your body, going through the motions of what was your life, but being detached from all of it. You don’t recognize yourself. Your previous life feels but a vapor long gone, like a mist of a dream you begin to wonder if it happened at all. Widowhood is the irony of knowing if that one person was here to be your support, you would have the strength to grieve that very person. The thought twists and confuses you. If only they were here to hold you and talk to you, you’d have the tenacity to tackle this unwanted life. To tackle the arduous task of moving on without them. Widowhood is missing the one person who could truly understand what is in your heart to share. The funny joke, the embarrassing incident, the fear compelling you or the frustration tempting you. To anyone else, you would have to explain, and that is too much effort, so you keep it to yourself. And the loneliness grows inside you.   

Widowhood is struggling with identity. Who are you if not their spouse? What do you want to do if not the things you planned together? What brand do you want to buy if not the one you two shared for all those years? What is your purpose if the job of investing into your marriage is taken away? Who is my closest companion when my other half isn’t here?  

Widowhood is feeling restless because you lost your home, identity, partner, lover, friend, playmate, travel companion, co-parent, security, and life. And you are drifting with an unknown destination.  

Widowhood is living in a constant state of missing the most intimate relationship. No hand to hold. No body next to you. No partner to share your burden.  

Widowhood is being alone in a crowd of people. Feeling sad even while you’re happy. Feeling guilty while you live. It is looking back while moving forward. It is being hungry but nothing sounding good. It is every special event turning bittersweet.  

Yes. It is much more than simply missing their presence. It is becoming a new person, whether you want to or not. It is fighting every emotion mankind can feel at the very same moment and trying to function in life at the same time. Widowhood is frailty. Widowhood is strength. Widowhood is darkness. Widowhood is rebirth.  

Widowhood…..is life changing. 

~ Selina Robins

I couldn't help but reflect on how much can change in a year. How much you can get used to. When Jamie was sick and when he first passed, I couldn't sleep without my pregnancy pillow wrapped tightly around my whole body. Trying to trick my body into thinking it was being held. I'd stay awake on my phone trying to not think about being alone until I was basically dropping the phone on my face and it morphed from falling asleep to passing out from exhaustion.

Nowadays, I probably stay up too late... But I relish whatever time I have to lay in bed and have me time without a baby waking up needing my attention and that pillow is shoved in the back of my closet. I no longer wake up surprised that he's not there.

After he passed, I couldn't bring myself to listen to music or watch TV for MONTHS. Everything hurt. Everything made me think of him. Everything made me fall apart. When I drove to Iowa for the first time with my mom, we drove the whole way without turning on any music at all. Now I am back to bopping along to music in the car and watch whatever TV I can outside of Ms. Rachel. I still have occasional triggers that pull all the air out of the room. But I no longer cry every day. I think sometimes I may even go a few weeks without crying. Though, I'm a terrible timekeeper so don't take my word for it. 

When I went back to Medford over the summer, I parked on our cul de sac and stared at our front door. At the place we called home for so many years and I cried and cried. I took the babies on the same walk we used to take with Olive. I thought about all the memories we'd made and all the memories that we should have had the chance to make. When I first moved to Iowa, one of the hardest parts was that Jamie had never been here. We had no memories here. I was going to rattle around in a house he'd never stepped foot in, walk streets we'd never walked together. I am such a sentimental person and that still makes me sad today. Iowa was a clean slate that I never asked for. Now when I say "we" it's me and the Twinkies, and we've made so many memories in these places he won't ever walk.

He's been gone for 15 months, though really he's been gone from me for 16 considering the weeks in the hospital. Our babies are almost a year old. I simultaneously can't believe it's been so long, and also can't believe it hasn't been longer... if that makes any sense. I think of him countless times a day. I watch videos, look at old pictures, relive our memories on Facebook. Some days this is comforting, others it's heart wrenching. Painful. Many months ago I realized that I didn't have any recordings of his voice telling me that he loved me, since I didn’t have any on my phone and my hard drive had died. I had videos where he says the words “I love you” but they weren’t to me, and I don’t know how to describe the way that hurt. I knew he loved me, but knowing I’d never hear him say it again was another new level of loss. Then, while searching my email for something else in the last couple weeks I ended up stumbling across a couple videos he'd sent me from before I'd moved to Oregon, telling me he loved me and missed me. Oof... the relief... but also the pain. When packing to move it was only a few weeks after he’d gone. Every item of his that I gave away to someone to remember him felt like I was giving away a piece of my soul. I wanted to hoard every piece of him and cling to it like it would make me believe he was still here. When I got to Iowa I had planned to set up in the basement as close as I could to the downstairs of our home so I could have somewhere to go that felt like home. But there was so much stuff, and I had gotten so pregnant so that never panned out. Instead, I put his clothes back in the dressers and the closets. “It’s a big closet…. There’s room for it. I can wear his shirts to bed. I’m pregnant and my own don’t fit me.” His socks were in the same drawers they’d been in for all the years before. I told myself I’d wear them for extra warmth when it was cold. That never happened. It's something you really can't understand unless you've experienced it. The inability to let these small things go. But then I started running out of places to put things. I had baskets of clean baby laundry with nowhere to go and I decided to bite the bullet and take the stuff out of the dressers. Go through my own drawers and clean out what wouldn’t be worn. I kept a few of Jamie’s t-shirts in there, since I actually do wear those to bed and around the house pretty regularly. It may not seem like much, but to me, it was another small step forward into accepting my new life, post Jamie. 

Lately I've found myself focusing more on negatives of our relationship. Thinking of our shortcomings and things that we could have done better. I don't really know why I'm doing this. I have several ideas in my head as to why it could be, but I'm not going to try to unpack that for now, even for myself. I wish I would stop though. Jamie was amazing. He was a fantastic husband, partner, person, father. He made me feel so loved, safe, and really and truly happy. It didn't matter whatever shitty thing was going on in life, as long as we had each other we could get through anything. Sometimes I get so mad at him for leaving me. He doesn't deserve for me to think negative thoughts. He only deserves praise for taking such good care of me for the years that I had him. I still talk aloud to him sometimes. I ask him questions that I know he can't answer. I still look for signs from him that I'm on the right path.

I know that if he hadn't died, that we would have stayed together forever. I know that in my bones, in my soul. While of course I couldn't predict the every day... Our basic future was relatively predictable. Now I am swimming in a sea of the unknown. I HATE the unknown. I am an over thinker and a planner and living in uncertainty and feeling the lack of stability is not something I particularly care for. And it's not just me here, it's me and two tiny humans that are completely dependent on me and me alone. I am their sole caregiver, their sole decision maker. It's hard. It's scary. The weight of that responsibility is so, so heavy because I truly don't know what I'm doing. I know that we'll be okay. I know that we'll make it through whatever life sends our way, I've overcome and survived more than I ever thought I'd have to... And at this point I feel like I could probably get through anything, if I had to. For them. 

I am not the same person I was 15, 16 months ago. I am more damaged, yet also more resilient. I am stronger, but also more unsure. I am a kind of sad that seeps into my bones, but I am also happy and find the joy in every little moment I can. I don't take for granted the little things I used to. When Jamie came into my life he changed me. He made me a less cynical person, he showed me that real and true love does exist. We taught each other, through trial and error, how to be great partners. His death has taught me just as much about loss and perseverance. And I hope to be able to use these qualities that I've developed because of him to help form these two moldable humans into great people who do great things in the world. I will always love Jamie. And I will grieve him for the rest of my life. But I will also try to live my new life without him to the fullest. Our life was beautiful before I lost him and I will do my best to fill our (mine and the babies) lives with beauty now in the after as well.