Year Three.
How?? How has it been three years and yet when I close my eyes and it can be December 12th, 2022 with such crystal clarity? I can get lost in that day, feeling my freezing cheeks and sore muscles from shoveling snow, hearing the delicious laughter filling the house at dinner, smelling Sam’s soap on his beard after a long bath and remember that pure contentment washing over my soul while I curled up next to him in bed that final night. I look back with a longing so strong that it’s not possible to put into words, but it’s not just my husband that I yearn for, I long for the woman I see at his side. I long for that blissfully naive woman who was overflowing with love, so happy and energetic, who had a knack for finding the silver linings and loved a good challenge. Most of all, I miss the woman who was always excitedly looking forward to the future, who couldn’t wait for the days where we thought we would grow old together, wrinkled and gray with a gaggle of grandkids to spoil around us. I long for that version of myself before I broke, before I became this shell of a human that I feel I am now.
Year three was the year I stopped fighting. I stopped fighting to find that version of myself. I stopped fighting to keep the dream of my future alive. I stopped fighting to keep everything of his in it’s place as if he were coming back. This was the year I gave up and accepted that the night Sam died, my world and everything I thought it was died with him, never to return. Giving this up was the final tap that collapsed my shattered soul leaving nothing but a pile of dust. It was only then, when I let go of that hope and finished that spiral, that I could look at what was left and decided to start trying, knowing that in this new world of mine I was going to stumble and fall… a lot. However, I could finally see it there; a tiny, itty bitty flicker of hope that I can find a new normal in which I can look in the mirror and see something other than the broken husk I see staring back at me, and that small flicker was enough for me to pick myself back up and try.
Nothing in this world makes sense to me now, everything is so foreign and even my own thoughts feel strange. Navigating in this new life by myself with no direction has been unbelievably difficult and every day feels like 1 step forward, 2 steps back. A constant dance that leaves my head spinning and yet as discouraging as it feels as I go through it, I can look back and see hints of evidence of my progress. I’ve kept my feet moving while I finally cleaned his side of the bed. I stayed upright while I cleaned his things out of the bathroom. I kept breathing when I packed (most) of his clothes away. In those moments I am the same widow that was lying in the middle of the frozen road screaming, not able to breathe. In the moment it feels like it’s the opposite of progress and even though I know deep down that the guilt surging through me isn’t warranted, it still eats me alive.
One of yhe hardest part of waving that white flag, is that I know how it must look from the outside. Assumptions are made that I’m healing, moving on or finding peace. It couldn’t be further from the truth. The grief feels heavier, the panic as things continue to change is paralyzing and the ache of missing him only grows. This wonderful man was my entire world, and while he will always have every bit of the person I was, my hope moving forward is that I can find a way to not have my entire world consumed by my longing for a past life and instead learn to accept the new person I have to be, allowing his memory to be a supporting role instead of the main character.
Try. That is what I promised myself, to simply keep trying. And not only to try my best to keep moving, but also to try and give myself grace on the days when I just can’t. One part of me that will never fade is my deep rooted stubbornness I inherited from my dad. I have sent up my silent thanks many times, for that quality has gotten me through many moments I didn’t think I could keep going. So here we go into year 4, where I will let that stubbornness lead me while I keep trying, and failing, until hopefully one day I get it right and find a balance.