Scratching the Surface

When I first started this blog, it was thirty days after my husband’s accident. It’s now about 30 days before the one year mark of his death; we’re approaching his deathiversary. Should we ignore it and pretend it’s simply another day? Should we celebrate his life? Should we book a trip? Bake his favorite desserts? Drink a whole bunch of alcohol and forget the day ever happened? No one really has that answer. I have been missing him a lot today. We miss him everyday, but the last few days have been heavy. September is the last month we can say, on any given day, “last year we did this with daddy…”

Remember on this day last year when daddy….

This is also the week of my birthday. It’s a little less than 30 days from our wedding anniversary. The last two special occasions that will be a “first” for our family without him. It’ll be the first birthday in about 15 years that I will not talk to him and it’ll be what would have been our ninth wedding anniversary. Just writing those stats throws a wicked gut punch that takes my breath away.

Earlier today I soaked in a hot bath and listened to music with the intent of relaxing. Unable to sit still, I began shaving my legs when my emotions took over and I started to lose my breath and cry; but I only let it last maybe 5 seconds. I’d shake my head, take a deep breath, and continue shaving. I repeated that a few times until my head started listening to me. As I did that, it reminded me of when I was a little girl crying over something that wasn’t going to change. My crying wasn’t going to make anything better. And I remember sobbing, then quickly stopping. I stood up, took a deep breath, and wiped my eyes. I went upstairs and got a drink of water (and most likely a snack) and never cried about it again.

That image has flashed in front of me more times than I’d like in this past year. Part of me envies her. How lucky she was to just drink some water and carry on with her day as if her heart wasn’t hurting. Part of me pities her. How sad for her that even as a child she was already in the process of building stone gates around her heart. But most of me thanks her. When my grief takes over and I need to pull it together, I visualize her and shake my head, take a deep breath and wipe my eyes.

Yet, grief isn’t something you can wipe away. Not without it causing true physical ailments to your body and your mind. I need to stay healthy, so I need to grieve as my body demands. But I’m so thankful for that little girl who taught me how to mask it when I needed to. My problems are much bigger than the ones she was dealing with, but today I carry hers with me as well. I carry everything she buried and locked away with a quick wipe of the eye.

When a significant trauma happens and a sudden death hits your life, your other traumas begin to surface, too. I believe it’s because our minds are so rocked that the previous traumatic events are easier to view—nothing compares to how you feel now. And everything before this feels lifetimes away. But in reality, it is adding more and more layers to what we’re already in the process of sifting through.

I remember, shortly after telling my kids their daddy wasn’t coming home, sitting in the car and looking over at my friend who was driving and saying, “I’m only 34 and I have been through some shit.” It wasn’t until that very moment I actually admitted to myself life hasn’t been easy. My life has been filled with obstacles. Filled with chaos. Filled with trauma. And it wasn’t until the life I was holding onto so tightly completely escaped me that my body just gave in. And it was like, “Girl. This is some shit. Plain and simple.” There was no room left for denial.

I believe one reason I wasn’t drowning in a puddle of tears while planning my husband’s funeral—why I was able to get up and speak and give a eulogy—is because I was in the “of course this would happen,” robotic state of mind. I immediately began channeling that little girl in me who wipes her eyes and smiles, grabs a notebook and imagines a different world. I don’t remember ever walking on steady ground. I don’t remember a time where I could speak freely without having to worry how someone around me was going to interpret it. Even when I started blogging, I felt I had to keep in mind who in my life will be reading and how they may feel about it.

I held my kids tight that first night and many after. I listened to their confusion, their anger, and their sadness. I answered everything I could and admitted when I didn’t have the answers. I cried very little in front of them at the beginning and they both questioned it.

Since the very first night they slept in a world that took their daddy away, I began my mental shift that has carried me to today. It has allowed me to approach every day as a new opportunity. No matter what the opportunity may be, there’s something we can appreciate. There’s something we can learn from. And there’s something we can admire. I had no idea how I was going to be able to carry that mindset with me into our future. I had no idea how I was not going to grow cold and bitter. It has been a whirlwind, to say the least. It took a lot of listening, reflecting, and isolation to truly acknowledge the truths of me, of my husband, of others who once surrounded me. The amount of discovery that’s taken place this past year is a lifetime of information all thrown together at once and I’m barely scratching the surface. Having that all fall on you at once, having no choice but to identify it and face it, forces you to learn more about yourself. And once I finally acknowledged it’s time to shed a lot of those weights, I slowly began taking down all the stones that were guarding that little girl’s heart. They were blocking her view. They were subduing her intuition. They were making her doubt herself.

If you put in the work, through all the gut wrenching and messy moments, you’ll be inspired by the person you are becoming. I now allow myself to grieve and to continue to love others fully and unconditionally and also set boundaries to respect the love I have for myself. I think back to that little girl and I vow to now always be the woman she needed and to show my children that vulnerability isn’t a weakness. It’s a sign of passion. It’s a sign your heart has touched something. And that’s a beautiful thing. We will learn the dance of trusting our heart enough to be vulnerable and trusting our gut enough to know when to wipe our eyes and smile.

Our home is different. Our home will never be the same after that morning. But it will forever be beautiful. It’ll carry a different sort of beauty. One that never takes our time together for granted. One that allows vulnerability to take over sometimes, tears to flow and grief to escape our bodies in whatever form it needs to. It’ll be one where we trust ourselves and our actions even when the ground is unsteady. It’ll be a home where we believe our loved ones who have been taken from this Earth are still with us in some sort of way. It’ll be one where we celebrate their life on any given day and never hesitate to say their name.

**The accompanying picture was created by my son. It is “daddy’s hand coming down from the sky to say hi.”