It’s been another
hard day without you, Baby. My counselor keeps reminding me to be kind to
myself. Compassionate with myself. To give myself grace in this space. I have
to remind myself to do that because it doesn’t come naturally. We’re all so
hard on ourselves, aren’t we? While I grieve your absence, I feel so much inward pressure to get my act together, put on a brave front, and keep moving forward.
It’s just that you’re
not going to be there when I do.
I was sitting at
the dinner table tonight and found myself staring off into space, remembering the
way you used to walk up behind me, put your arms around me, and kiss my neck.
Or touch my shoulder as you went by. Friends and the kids give me hugs, but
they’re not the same as one of yours. What I’d give right now to bury my head
in your shoulder and cry my eyes out.
I’d give it all
away just to be able to do that.
Sometimes I can sense
your presence, if I quiet my thoughts and am still. I really believe the veil
between this life and the dimension where you’re living now is thin. That you
and others who’ve gone ahead of us can see what we’re dealing with here. Randy
Alcorn wrote a book about heaven and said you pray for us. I am so comforted by
that. It makes the separation feel less . . . separate.
I’m reading a book
on grief, too - “It’s Ok That You’re Not Ok.” The writer lost her husband in a
drowning accident. She knows what this feels like. We lost you three months ago
last Wednesday. Every day forward since then has been, as my counselor says, “a
slog through grief.” Like my feet are stuck in a tarpit and I have to pull them
up one at a time and try to keep living. Surviving. Doing this terrible thing life is asking of
me—that I go on without you beside me.
I am wracked with
sorrow today. Somehow, my brain and body have tried to protect me from the
terrible truth that you’re really gone. I keep expecting you to walk through the door. Or call me. Or send me a text. It's instinct. I reach for my phone to check in with you and then . . . I remember. I read a lot in the grief book today
about why it’s so hard for such a simple thing like that to sink in—how there’s
nothing in my previous experience to relate that information to, so my brain
has to develop new pathways for accepting this heartbreaking reality.
“Reality.” Now there’s a word. My husband, my
best friend, my lover, my soul mate, is . . . see? I can’t even finish the
sentence. You’re not dead. Your body is gone, and God, that hurts enough to
say. But you’re still alive, standing here perhaps, beside me, on the other
side of that thin veil that only you can see through.
Which isn’t fair.
That’s not why I’m
writing, though. I just need to reach out to your spirit, your heart, and say
that familiar thing I’ve said to you for nearly forty-seven years. That I love
you, Baby. I miss you so much and I can’t imagine how to do the next thing and
the next thing after that. I don’t know why I bother putting on foundation and
mascara every morning since I cry it all off anyway. Three months since you left feels like a
lifetime, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the rest of my life here without
you.
And that’s the sad
thought that keeps me crying.
I know, I’ve
always known, this thing would happen someday. We got older when we weren’t
looking and we both knew our bodies are tired. They don’t work like they used
to. Now that I’m a single instead of part of a couple, all I seem to see are couples.
They’re all young, doing the things you and I used to do together. Strong and
energetic, caught up in the excitement of life together, raising children,
making their dreams come true. We were them once. Yesterday. It feels like it was
only yesterday.
And now, here I
am, writing a letter you may or may not read, since I don’t know if you get
mail where you’re living now. I wish you did. I’d write you every day, just
like I did while you were overseas in the Air Force for those sixteen months that
we were apart. We survived that separation, too, Baby. That time, though, we counted
down the days until we could be in each other’s arms again. In this scenario,
the days ahead of us are building instead of reducing.
This time is
harder. And I hate it.
My counselor told
me it hurts so much because I loved you so much. It’s
the risk of loving someone wholeheartedly. Losing that someone will take you
down. Knock you out. Wound you so badly you’ll never be the same again.
But what other
choice is there in this life? Not to love? Not to take the risk? Protect your
heart from the bad and deny it the good it deserves? That would kill it just as
much as loving and losing.
That
thought leads to the realization that someday all the memories we made together
will bring me comfort. Every now and then one of them will pop up and the kids
and I will talk about it and even laugh about something funny you said or did.
But today, the memories are too beautiful to be comforting. They’re painful and
I can’t let them in, which is too bad. It makes me miss you even more.
How many times can
I say this before I find something new to say? “I miss you. God, how I miss
you.” I read over our text messages tonight—all the conversation we had between
phones when we first went into the hospital. Your love for me and mine for you
was all over them. We thought we’d come out together. We went to the hospital
planning to get well, not to die.
I just want you to
know I love you with all my heart. I have always loved you. I always will love
you. I’m so sorry it turned out this way. Maybe tonight in my dreams I’ll see
you. Feel your hand on my shoulder. See your smile.
If not tonight,
then Someday. That was always our word, wasn’t it, Baby?
Someday, my love.
Until then, good night.
Love,
Eula
❤😍😘
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