How Is It Possible?

I will begin this post with a disclaimer:  I am ok.  I really am but just need to get some things off my heart.  My Hospice bereavement counselor suggested many times that I should write things down and this blog is in some ways exactly what I am doing.  I really and truly am ok.

Sometimes I marvel that the human psyche (definition; the soul personified) can possibly deal with multiple emotions at the same time.  In the past couple of years I find myself at times feeling mad, sad, and glad all at the same time.  I am sure that a great deal of what I am feeling now is intensified by the holidays.  But the prevailing emotions seem to be sadness and confusion.  Oh don't get me wrong I also still feel thankful, joyful, and optimistic but these have kinda taken a back seat.  And I also know what the most prominent fuel for this feeling right now is.  Yesterday was my wedding anniversary.  If Bobby were still living it would have been our 22nd anniversary.  And oh God, I miss him so bad.  But, I also loved him enough to rejoice that he doesn't have to live his life in pain and suffering.  My husband was a very energetic athletic man.  I sometimes would tell him that it really was ok to sometimes just sit and do nothing because he was always doing something.  To watch him over a 10 month period of time change from a big robust man to a shell of his old self who weighed less than I did.  (I even had about a 2 week period that I thought I had buried him in my pants, but that is another story.).  I believe with all my heart that he is in heaven free of pain, sorrow, and suffering so no I love him enough that I would not wish for him to be back.  But, that doesn't make me miss him any less.  I read something this week that another widow of 2 years had written and there was such truth in it.  "For anyone grieving a significant loss and especially the loss of a spouse; the first year is a year of learning to adjust and physically survive.  The second year is when profound feelings of sadness arise as the loss becomes more real."  Ya'll have heard me say that in some ways the 2nd year was just as hard as the 1st just in a different way and I think that pretty well sums it up.  I have no idea what the 3rd is going to be like.  I only know that I miss my husband and I am lonely.  It is a loneliness that has absolutely nothing to do with the amount of people around you.  It is that loneliness of the heart.  Of not having that person that knows your thoughts almost as well (and sometimes better) than you know yourself.  Of not having that person who can finish your sentence, who even at your worst appearance still thinks you are the most beautiful thing in the world to them.  Of not having that person that just senses that you need a hug and that with that person no words have to be said.  Johnny Cash said, "There's no way around grief and loss; you can dodge it all you want, but sooner or later you just have to go into it, through it, and hopefully come out on the other side.  The world you find there will never be the same as the world you left."

Thank you for letting me bend you ear.  I really am ok, I am just still trying to adjust to or maybe even find this "new normal".  And to be honest some days it just plain ole sucks.  Don't know about ya'll but I think that is pretty healthy to admit that.  That's my story and I am sticking to it.