Two years and two months today





In case you didn't notice the title, today marks two years and two months since my one true love, my soul mate, vanished from this earth. Just vanished, most people call that vanishing trick dying, but it has the same effect, gone without a trace, never to be seen again on this earth.  I'm still in a sort of shock two years and two months later. We keep moving but I don't know how.

Every month on this date, I just sorta expect everything to go wrong, there is no reason for it to go right. For two years and two months this day has just been wrong. That's what I was expecting today so I planned accordingly "I am not leaving the couch" I declared. But then Baby Girl got invited to a play date and she was actually excited to go. So I broke my decree and drove her to her friends house. As I was driving back I was thinking, "you know what crazy widow, today has been ok, nothing has gone wrong, the sun is shinning for the first time all year, today has been ok"

I kid you not at that exact second I heard the song that was playing on the radio. It was a country song, Dan and I used to hold each other and dance to it. I believe it's called "remember when" It is about an old couple looking back at their life and saying things like, remember when 30 was old, remember when we had toddlers. I would do it all again with you. Dan and I loved that song and would often imagine us in the future as an old couple, remembering back on our life and saying these things to each other.  We would remember when 30 seemed old. Never in the song does it say and remember when you died prematurely at 36. Because thats not how true love stories end, thats not how fairy tales end.

For the billionth time it struck me that we will never do this. We will never look back on our 30s together as the time when we were so young and full of energy and had our whole lives before us. And for the billionth time in the last two years and two months it felt like I was being stabbed in the heart with a spoon (because it hurts more)  For the billionth time I was so mad at my prince charming, madder then I have ever been at him at anytime he was alive. Mad because thats not us. we don't get to do that anymore. Our remember whens are gone, our future is gone, he is gone.

Our remember whens stop abruptly at 36. Now it's I remember when. Now I have to remember everything for the two of us,(I guess that makes me always right)  for Baby Girl. Now she has to remember her daddy through the stories we tell, and the all too few memories of him she is able to save. Her remember whens were taken too. No remember when I broke curfew and my dad came out looking for me. No remember when dad came and rescued me from a party. No remember when dad and I danced at my wedding. No remember when dad pulled out a shotgun on my boyfriend.  She will never have those.

In case your wondering two years and two months later it still hurts. Like someone is gutting my heart out with a spoon.

I wrote a book about my grief, you can read it here: Carry on Castle

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

PTSD is not for sissys

Image
Do you know what PTSD is? Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I bet you think you do.  You might say something like "ya its what people that go off to war have" true. You might say "It's when people see really terrible things" true. A few really smart people might say "ya my friend watched her beloved husband die and now she has it" very true. If you are a mental health professional you might say "ya a child who all of a sudden has a dad who dies will have it" also true.  I was telling a friend once about how life is now without Dan and she said "wow it's almost like you have PTSD or something." No not almost, we do. But what exactly is it? Well it's complicated. I can't describe it for baby girl because I am not in her mind (unfortunately) but I can try and describe it for me. I am hesitant to do so; it's not an easy thing to talk about, But if we are going on a the point of this blog is to be therapeutic for me and h
Read more

The Floor

Image
I pulled him off of our bed and onto the floor. The 911 dispatcher told me to. She said it would help him breathe. I grabbed his ankles and pulled hard on his legs. He fell to the floor with a loud thump. I gasped at the loudness of it, but he didn’t move on his own at all. He didn't shake his head and say, “Ow, what’d you pull me off the bed for?” He didn't do anything. He just laid there. She told me to lift his neck up to help him breathe. I tried, but it was hard to move him, and I didn't want to hurt him.  I put my head on his chest again and again, I couldn’t tell if he was breathing, I couldn’t tell if that was his heartbeat or mine that I heard as he laid on the floor.  “Daddy! Wrestle with me!” she would shout, as she jumped into him and they landed on the floor. It was their favorite game. She would pound him and he would exaggerate the impact, clutching his stomach and lifting his legs in the air.  “You got me good, baby girl!” he would tell her. She would grin i
Read more

Milestones in grief

Image
                                                                Dan and I around 2011 I wrote this for a writing contest about milestones. Writing about every grief milestone would take a book and I had a word limit so I couldn't do that. I tried to do the really big ones. I have not had a particularly eventful life. When I was eight, my parents moved, but they took me with them. At ten, I had a pretty bad accident, but I came out of it fine. My husband and I met at sixteen, and at nineteen, we went against all good advice and got married. I gave birth to our daughter when I was 27.   I loved our boring, normal life. We were living our happily ever after. I was a stay at home mom, Dan was finishing up grad school. Everyone says this kind of thing at funerals, but Dan really was the most amazing person I’ve ever met in my life. He wanted to save the world: the people, the animals, the ecosystem. He wanted to make the world better, and he was. I loved our little family and couldn
Read more