More Milestones

Today I will be resigning from the job that I love so well. It's breaking my heart but I must do it for health reasons. I will no longer be part of that amazing crew and I know that I will tremendously miss being with them and sharing our adventures together.

It's also another milestone, of which there have been many, and it's almost like a last chapter. I feel that this particular milestone has a certain resonance to it, a finality so to speak. It's almost as though it's one of the very last links between our 'old reality' and our 'new reality'.

My son graduated in June - we are so proud of him! Another difficult milestone - it was both happy and sad. We got through it though - we've learned how to do that and have coping mechanisms for it - we silently cling to one another and share 'the look' with each other and express it without words - our grief may be public but our pain is private, we do not share it outside of our little circle.

It was shocking to realize that now that my son has graduated, we no longer have to stay in Chicago.

It's shocking to realize that I've been in remission for a year.

It's shocking to remember what my life was like 2 years ago and to think about all the changes and milestones since then.

So many changes.

Moving forward (which is not moving on), staying present and keeping my family together, learning how to live this new life, honoring the lessons he taught us - love with all of your heart, be joyful and share that joy, smile often and help those in need - these are all our new reality. 

Graduation, possibly moving to a new home, resigning and leaving my friends and the job that I love so much - these are some of our recent milestones.

Moving forward, college, maybe a fresh start in a new home, maybe start a new job or career path - these may become milestones in our new reality. Who knows?

Life is short.

Things change.

Take a deep breath and hold on.

You never know what is going to happen.

We Cancelled Christmas

I know that neither family could tell by our behavior, but Thanksgiving was horrific for us - it was too painful without him.

In the car on the way home from spending time with both sides of the family, the kids and I cried. We had long talks during both car rides home and decided that we are canceling Christmas.

We are going to stay home in our p.j.'s and graze and have a movie marathon and play video games and have breakfast for dinner.

Just thinking about the upcoming holidays without him brings tidal waves of pain and overwhelming sadness.

Found this online - author unkown. Some of it applies and some of it doesn't. Sometimes all of it applies and sometimes none of it applies.

I just know that today I am completely overwhelmed by pain and grief and simply cannot 'be strong' or 'carry on' or any of that - today I can only keep breathing.

To My Friend(s)

I have lost the one I love, the one I cherish. My lover, my best friend, my whole life. Either you have stumbled across this because you want to find out how to help me, or I have given this to you.

How I am Feeling
• I am numb. I am in shock. I am emotionally exhausted.
• I am in pain. A horrible, gut-wrenching, intense, unimaginable, and indescribable pain.
• My mind is totally occupied with processing my loss. I am trying to understand what has happened. I am attempting to make sense of it all. I am trying to comprehend the incomprehensible.
• I can’t sleep. I want to sleep all day. I am physically exhausted.
• I can’t eat. I can’t stop eating.
• I can’t be bothered cooking. I can’t be bothered cleaning. I don’t want to go shopping.
• Everything is overwhelming. Small tasks are overwhelming. Small details are overwhelming.
I just don’t want to know about it right now.
• Nothing sticks in my mind. I walk out the door without my keys. I forget what I was going to do.
I forget everything except that my love has gone.
• I am going through tidal waves of emotion. One minute I might be laughing, the next I may be in tears.
• Sometimes I want to talk. Sometimes I need to be alone. Sometimes I need silent company.
Sometimes I need all of these things in the space of 5 minutes.
• Some days I just want to curl up in bed and do nothing. Some days I will keep myself totally occupied in an attempt to escape.
• Sometimes I will be intense. Sometimes I will be irrational. Sometimes I will be snappy, and often I will be totally lost in myself.
• Often I may not have a clue as to what I want, but it only takes a moment for me to realize what I don’t want.
• I am hypersensitive and will often be offended by things you say to try and make me feel better.
• I want to wail. I want to scream. I want to cry. I want to just sit.
• I have no choice how I react. This is coming from deep inside me and intelligence and self control have no effect. It comes from the basal self.
• Sometimes it so hard for me to respond to phone calls or letters or emails, but I truly appreciate that you are doing it, so please don’t stop just because I don’t respond.
• I will not be fully-functional at work for a long time. In fact, I may never work with the same intensity again as my perspectives of what is important and what isn’t has been changed permanently.
• I still want to laugh. I need to laugh. I may suddenly go quiet mid-laugh, when hit by a sudden reminder, but I desperately need to continue to laugh.

Emotional Things You Can Do
• Let me talk about him/her. I want to talk about our love. I want to tell you how we met, our last days, and everything in between. I want to show you his/her picture, tell you how wonderful (s)he was.
• Let me cry. Your acceptance that I need to cry and your permission to allow me to is one of the best gifts you can give me. Hand me a tissue, and do your best to sit quietly and let me cry.
• Once you have allowed me to open up or cry, please don’t change the subject or try to stop me.
I know you feel uncomfortable that I am in pain. Don’t. Changing the subject, trying to stop me crying just makes me hold everything inside, and eats away at me.
• Tell me all your stories of when my love was sweet, courageous, rotten or funny. I need to hear everything about him/her. If you don’t know many, find out some from those who are too scared to approach me now.
• Let me try to tell you what is going on inside me. I won’t succeed, but I need to try. You don’t have to do anything. Just allowing me to do it, and allowing me to feel what I need to feel means so much.
• It is really hard for me to tell other people about my loss. I’m working full time to deal with my emotions. Trying to deal with someone else’s reaction or discomfort is the last thing I need, so if someone needs to know it would be good if you could explain it to them.

What Not To Do
• Don’t tell me you understand how I feel, or that you can imagine the pain I am going through, unless you have lost the love of your life. Trust me, you can’t. If I can’t, and I am going through it, trust me, you can’t – your mind will just not let you voluntarily imagine this much pain.
• Don’t try to compare my loss to the loss of a parent, or a friend, or an acquaintance or pet, it’s not the same. I understand that all of these things are painful, but it is not the same.
• Don’t ask how I’m doing unless you really want to know. I am assuming that as you know, and as you have asked, you truly want to know.
• Don’t try to save me from my feelings or make me feel better. I know you can’t bear to see me in so much pain, but I need to go through all of these feelings whether I want to or not.
• Once you have “given me permission” to talk or cry, please don’t try and distract me with small talk. I know it makes you feel better if I appear happy, but my pain is ever-present and it makes me feel like you don’t care.
• Don’t tell me everything will be okay.
• Don’t tell me “(s)he’s always with you”.
• Don’t tell me “(s)he’s no longer in pain”.
• Don’t tell me “(s)he’s looking down on you from heaven”.
• Don’t tell me “you’re lucky that you had such love, some people don’t”.
• Don’t tell me “(s)he’s in a better place”.
• Don’t however be surprised however if I say these things…
• Don’t ever tell me “you must be strong”. If ever there’s a time I should be permitted to be weak, this is it. What’s more, if I only “need to talk” to you once every few weeks, chances are I have been strong and right now I really need you to understand that I am exhausted and need help.
• Whatever you do don’t tell me “If I were you I’d….” Until you are in the same situation, you have absolutely no idea what you will do. Your logical brain has absolutely no control.
• Never try telling me “life goes on”, or “(s)he wouldn’t want you to cry”, or “God will never give you more than you can handle” or any other meaningless platitudes.
• Don’t try to solve my “problem”. Unless you can bring him/her back, it can’t be “solved”.
• Don’t feel the need to fill in silences. I know the silences are hard for you, but if you can accept them, you are helping me immensely.
• Please don’t try and help me find “closure”, or tell me I need to find “closure”. Closure is an obscene word for me right now, as is “moving on”/”move on”.

Practical Things You Can Do
I understand that a lot of you find it hard to cope with my emotional pain. Hate to see me hurting so. If you can’t help me emotionally, you can help me practically.
• Don’t ask me what you can do to help. I have no idea, I am overwhelmed.
• Bring me some meals that I can just put in the microwave.
• Find out what sort of bread, milk, toilet paper, etc I use and bring me them to me. I have no idea I need them until I run out, so don’t bother asking me if I need anything.
• If you are an organized person offer to manage my bills. Collect the bills as they come in and let me know when they need to be paid, and make sure I do. Time has no meaning for me right now. It’s only when the cut-off notices come that I realize I need to do something.
• Get copies of photos I don’t have from family and friends and put them in an album for me. It will be one of the most precious gifts you could give me.

Practical Things I Need To Do
• I need to surround myself with beauty.
• Sit in the sun and just soak it up.
• Enjoy nature. Look at the majesty of mountains, and enjoy the miracle of a blade of grass.
• Have a massage.
• Write in a journal.
• Cry when I need to. Tears are a release.
• Not make any big decisions for a while. A big enough life change has already taken place.

Remember
• Grief is an emotional injury that requires time to heal. Not a week, not a month, not even a year, it takes as long as it takes. It is similar to major physical injury. You may not be able to see the wounds on the inside, but they are there.
• Real-life is nothing like TV.
• I will not “get over it” – I will learn to live with my loss and incorporate the lessons into my life.
• I will get better over time, but I will never forget him/her. The pain ebbs and flows, but never goes completely.

"Just keep making through one more minute at a time. It's really, really hard work. I know. I've done it. "

After a while, the grief will come in waves. Hang on, and ride it out. Tell yourself that this is a wave - just hold on." - LorieW. at ywbb.org http://www.ywbb.org/forums/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=404816&page=0&fpart=6&vc=1

"In action movies when a heart is ripped out of someone's chest they die. I feel like someone ripped out my soul and instead of showing mercy, by letting me die; my punishment is to live. I love my husband not only with my heart but with my soul." - GodsPromise at ywbb.org http://www.ywbb.org/forums/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=404816&page=0&fpart=5&vc=1

Our love for them is not measured by how miserable we are because they are gone, but by how we tell their story and how we continue our part of the story. Make it a good one. - Anne E. at ywbb.org http://www.ywbb.org/forums/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=404816&page=0&fpart=4&vc=1

Milestones and Memories

It's 3 months today.

We lost our beloved Ariel 3 months ago today and it still does not seem real. I'm still waiting for him to call me from work 5 times a day. I'm still waiting for him to come through the patio door with a load of bags from Jewel and ask where the kids are so they can unload the groceries from the car. I'm still waiting for him to come in from the garage and say "C'mon babe, let's go for a ride and talk and get out of here for a while". I still expect him to be in the bed next to me when I wake up in the middle of the night, even though I don't sleep in there.

3:30 - 4:00 p.m. every day is horrible. It's when I automatically start anticipating him coming home from work and I've built my whole schedule around that for so long - always trying to plan my day so that I could take a short break from work to greet him when he got home for the day, and get a hug and a kiss, and have a quick chat before I went back to work.

I realized last week that I don't have to plan my day for that anymore. What a horrid realization that was and it was shocking and painful. It was so ingrained in me to plan my day around the time he would get home, always looking forward to him coming in the door with that huge smile. Steal a quick hug and kiss, exchange some small chat about the days events and scoot back to work - happy and looking forward to the evening together.

I was rushing through something on Friday at work and kept looking at the clock, automatically trying to figure out if I could finish my task on time. Friday is date night - we could go for a drive or get a movie or go for a nice bike ride cause the weather wasn't too bad.

I looked at the clock for the millionth time and realized - omigod - he's not going to be coming home and telling me to hurry and finish work so we could go for a bike ride. He's not going to come in the door and steal a kiss and tell me that he's going to run to Jewel cause he wants to make something special for dinner and, of course, we don't have the one ingredient he would need for that. He's not going to come in the door and tell me that he bought that book that I've been waiting to read and ask if he should put it on the nightstand so I can read it when I go to sleep, or should he put it on the end table so I can start reading it as soon as I'm done with work.

It was another milestone. Realizing that my daily schedule no longer revolves around him getting home from work. It was such a shock. There have been so many shocks like that.

I've had to delete most of his recorded programs from the DVR - that was hard. We were running out of room on there and there were so many of his programs on there. I spent several hours watching some of them and crying.

Oly came over Saturday and we spent several hours moving some of the tools from two of the smaller tool boxes into the newer, larger one. Oly and I had a few laughs and were able to share some nice memories. I spent most of the time struggling not to cry and not succeeding. Wally and Maria came by with Little David (what a cutie!!) and Oly and Wally loaded up the two smaller toolboxes into Wally's truck. Ariel and Wally had decided months ago to do this but had not had a chance. We all hung out in the kitchen after and had a few beers and it was so nice to see them. Starting to deal with the tool situation was a milestone.

Coping with the garage situation is another milestone, one that I've been avoiding as much as possible. Ariel was a very patient man. He waited 12 years for that garage and he really loved it and I was so happy for him that 'the playground' was finally done and he could go out there and do the things he had always talked about. He had alot of plans for out there - he was going to rebuild both of the VW's and take his time and enjoy it. He wanted to convert one of them to electric and install a solar panel for it and we had some really great conversations about that. He was going to eventually get another car to rebuild and had so much fun researching that. He was going to get the loft storage and all the tools sorted and organized and setup as a proper mechanics garage. We talked alot about his plans and dreams and ideas for out there and we were both pretty excited about all of it.

And now that won't happen. For the most part, I avoid the garage as much as I can. There are days though, that I go out there, turn on the lights, close the door and cry. I breath deep, and I can smell him out there - I inhale that and hold it as long as I can. I walk around and look at things and remember. I think about all the dreams and ideas and plans - how excited we were about all the things he would be able to do out there. I remember so many conversations about all the possibilities. So many memories.

There is still alot to do out there but I have to work up the courage to face it. I'm not ready for that yet.

There are all these little milestones and it's only been 3 months. There's so much that I'm not ready to think about or deal with yet. I don't like the milestones - each time feels like I'm losing a small piece of him and it's harsh. With some milestones - like the car - I have no choice, I have to deal with it. With others, I will wait - I don't want to lose any more pieces, they are too precious.