This Is A Rough Week

 

I write this for lots of reasons but in particular for a woman I met last night who just lost her father. We sat nex to each other at dinner. We talked about death and grief for  quite a while. And that's what this is about. Death and grief and healing and moving on.  She's worried about her mother, now left without her soul mate after 34 years of marriage. 

That's why it's  a rough week for me. At this time 17 years ago, my husband of 20 years was spiraling toward his death, which came on the morning of  February 1. I held his hand as he died.

Yes, 17 is a lot of time. But, then again, it isn't. No matter how many years pass, these few weeks of winter, with their tell-tale signs, bring back the three weeks he was on life support at the Washington Hospital Center. I shuttled back and forth between home and the waiting room, usually in a daze, when I wasn't sleeping on the waiting room flloor, or crying, or begging God and doctors. Outside was ice and cold and an overall bleak landscape. As now. So it comes back in memories stirred by January.

The loss of a loved one is awful in duplicate, triplicate and  a compound of that. I wouldn't wish my loss on anyone. But you do move on. The pain does become less sharp. I mean, what's the option? 

She asked me what I miss. I miss being loved, having the best friend, the reliable other, the person who had my back,  who believed in me when I didn't, who made me laugh when I couldn't, who was a handyman and a bon vivant and was happy just staying home, the three of us. I thrived on his view of the world and his sense of humor. The fact he loved me as much as he did was the cliché: wind beneath my wings. These aren't small values. 

Every day since is uphill. But you do it. Me and every other woman and man who has  lost their soul mate.

So, if I'm not all smiley this week, or if I seem inappropriately morose, it's not you. It's me. A brief pause in the past. And then, forward.